Steve Milton: Hockey Night in ... Stoney Creek: A look at the team that creates Olympic champions

The first in an occasional series by Spec columnist Steve Milton celebrating top-tier amateur hockey in Hamilton and area.

It's a Saturday afternoon in the heart of the hockey season and three of the best teams in town hit the Gateway Arena ice for a back-to-back-to-back triple-header.

Two of them are in the upper echelon of their age group in Canada and the third is the elite junior (under-22) women's team for the entire Golden Horseshoe, a legendary talent-developing side that has fed scores of players to American and Canadian college programs, plus several to the national team.

Olympic champions Sarah Nurse, Laura Fortino and Brianne Jenner have all come through the Stoney Creek Junior Sabres. So have 2022 world champion Kristin O'Neill and, among others, current NCAA shining lights Meghan Carter of Northeastern and Quinnipiac's Kendall Cooper.

This summer the Stoney Creek Girls Hockey Association will celebrate its Golden Anniversary. It was launched 50 years ago as Saltfleet Women's Hockey, long before female programs were even on the wider hockey radar. The organization took its permanent nickname in 1976 from the then-new Buffalo Sabres, and the NHL team's letter of approval is still in the association's files.

Stoney Creek offers house leagues and various tiers of rep teams at every age category, from under-seven into adult. With 650 players, association president Eugene Farago says, We've continued to grow this year when many other things in sport have been shrinking."

There's been increased registration in the younger age groups, and also in women's recreational hockey. But the under-22 team is the crown jewel. It sits at the top of the competitive pyramid, a destination point for players in the entire region aspiring to play Canadian university hockey or earn scholarships from American colleges.

Over the years, about 150 Sabres have played in the NCAA. Henlee Mahoney, this year's leading scorer, has already committed to Mercyhurst in Erie, Pa., while three other Sabres have been signed to U Sports schools and two more are about to take recruiting visits. Seven members of the junior team were still young enough to have played under-18 this year.

We are the Golden Horseshoe junior team," says Chris Ridgewell, the association's liaison with the NCAA and U Sports. We look in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Dunnville, Simcoe, to find the best kids in our area."

Scouts will often travel from the biggest U.S. programs to watch Sabres' games and practices, at both the junior and under-18 level, and they also have access to copious game film. Recent NCAA rule changes don't allow formal commitments until the late spring of the year a player enters Grade 12, but scouts begin building personnel dossiers before that.

The junior franchise creates an updraft for the Sabres' whole high-performance system, not only for players already in the association but for younger ones in other organizations who know that the bulk of the junior players will come from the under-18s and under-15s.

One of the big appeals is you can come in as a peewee (under-13) or bantam (under-15) and know you don't have to go anywhere else, you can stay right through your playing career," Ridgewell says.

Stoney Creek has increasingly elevated the profile of its junior players. Some of them help in the well-received skills sessions the organization offers all teams, and some grads are helping coach youth teams. A chart on the wall outside the dressing rooms - each of the under-15, under-18 and under-22 teams have their own, permanent, well-provisioned room - celebrates Sabres grads who've gone on to play in college. Hockey cards were made of each under-22 team member and handed out at the local Santa Claus parade. Anyone who buys a game-day ticket gets two free ones. Before each junior home game a team in the minor system is chosen to lunch on pizza, make support posters, present the colour guard and welcome the players off the ice after the first period.

Rituals like that are so important," says Megan Bozek, a four-time world champion and two-time Olympic silver medallist for Team USA, and an instructor in the skills development program. It's the visibility piece. If they see it, then they can do it."

Farago, the association president adds: It's important to get the girls known out there with our youngest players U-7s, U-11s, so they can say, I know that girl, I want to be like her. Not just because she is a good hockey player but because she comes out and helps me.' You build that and that's how you will start to get the fans because that's when you get the personal investment.

We want to make them famous enough in Stoney Creek that people say, It's Saturday afternoon: let's go to the junior game.' That's why we try to get all the girls out and have them looking up to the junior team."

While the under-18s have had a couple of down years in the standings of the ultracompetitive Ontario Women's Hockey League, the under-15s are ranked No. 1 in all of Canada and the under-18s are No. 3. Most of the under-18s will move up to junior next year, as will their head coach Taylor Abbott, who's flipping assignments with interim junior coach Scott Elliott, who'll take over the under-18s.

From the outside I always wondered why Stoney Creek was so good," says Abbott, who previously coached Glanbrook's junior C boys team and Hamilton Hawks girls. You'd figure it would be a Toronto program drawing these players but Stoney Creek gets the players young and develops them. The juniors only take three or four new players a year, so if you want to play junior, you usually have to be on the midget team, if you want to play midget, you usually have to be on the bantam team."

It requires well north of $100,000 a year to operate an elite junior women's program, with much of the expense going to travel and tournament costs. The junior Sabres run two of the association's tournaments and conduct other fundraisers to keep costs down from the list price" of about $10,000. But it still costs each junior Sabre about $6,000 a year, which is in the same range many men's junior players pay.

Madi Burr, 16, of Paris, and Hamilton's Peyton Anzivino, 17, are prolific scorers and co-captains of the under-18s. Both will step up to junior next year and, after that, likely find themselves in the NCAA.

I decided this was the best organization in girls hockey so I came here in novice after playing boys hockey in Paris," Burr says. The culture here is really good, and the coaching is a big part of it. It's a really big deal moving up to junior next season."

Anzivino adds that it's important that the junior Sabres increase their public presence, We need to express that girls hockey is like the boys. We have the same skill, but I feel people just don't know it as well."

Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com