Though the shots on goal differential was 41-9 in favor of the Canadians, Los Alamos skated with them for the better part of two periods. The score was 1-0 until the Saints broke the game open with three goals in a three-minute span at the end of the second period.

“We actually played pretty well,” said Los Alamos coach Craig Wehner, whose team at 6-1 is tied for second place in the New Mexico Interscholastic Ice Hockey League standings. “Obviously, they were a little tired in the first period, coming off that long bus ride. But we did a good job of forechecking and stayed with them before we ran into trouble.”

Wehner said the Saints (10-3-1) were definitely the best team Los Alamos has played this year.

Los Alamos’ Joseph Roback, left, and Jason Martinez, right, defend Daniel Thomson of the St. Thomas Aquinas Saints. The Saints are a high school hockey team from Kenora, Ontario, Canada, on a Christmas holiday, playing teams in New Mexico. (adolphe piere-louis/journal)

“It’s a wonderful experience for our kids,” he said. “Playing a team from Canada is not something you get to do very often.”

Conversely, playing a team from New Mexico is not something the Saints get to do — ever.

“We’re on Christmas holiday from school, so we’ve kind of turned this into a vacation, and it’s a good learning experience that our kids can take back with them,” Batters said. “Playing a variety of teams in different locations will help us in the future.”

Getting a taste of New Mexico

It may be a vacation, but the Canadians won’t have much time for sightseeing. The trip was planned around the NMIIHL All-Star Showcase, a three-day midseason tournament that includes all 10 league teams, hosted by the Taos Ice Tigers.

Thursday’s game was just a primer. The Saints will play six more games in three days against the best New Mexico can muster. Since the tournament is a sanctioned league event, all of St. Thomas’ games are exhibitions.

According to Batters, the trip to the Land of Enchantment was 10 years in the making.

Saints general manager Mike Favreau has a friend who coaches hockey in Albuquerque. The two had talked about the Saints making the trip for years, but it only now came to fruition.

The Saints boarded a bus New Year’s Day to make the 1,500-mile trip. Driving straight through, they arrived in Taos 28 hours later, about 11 p.m. Wednesday. Shortly after sunup, they were back on the bus and headed to Los Alamos for a 10:15 a.m. game.

Afterward, they lunched at a local restaurant, then visited Los Alamos’ Bradbury Science Museum before heading back to Taos. The Taos High School culinary arts class prepared for them an authentic New Mexican meal for dinner.

Between games this weekend, they’ll visit Taos Gorge and Taos Pueblo and do some shopping.

Already the team was impressed with what they’d seen of New Mexico.

“The team was looking forward to playing on this outdoor rink,” Batters said of the Los Alamos County Ice Rink. As strange as it may seem, outdoor hockey rinks are rare in Canada.

“If they can do it, we ought to be able to do it too,” he said.

Oh, oh Canada

Back in Taos, Ice Tiger coach Brian Greer was making final arrangements for the tournament. While the games against St. Thomas Aquinas are exhibitions, they’re more than that for the New Mexico kids.

“For our kids, it’s a big thrill. Playing Canadians in hockey is like going to Mount Sinai or something,” he said. “They take hockey seriously up there, so we want our best teams to face them.”

The Saints play the host school at 4 p.m. today and have a 10 p.m. game against defending state champion and league leader Cibola (10-1). On Saturday, they’re scheduled to play a combined Los Alamos/Taos team at 3:45 p.m. and El Paso’s Coronado High School (6-1) at 9:45 p.m. Sunday’s slate includes another game with Cibola at 10 a.m. and they’ll face off against Coronado again at 2:30 p.m.

All games will be at the Taos Ice Arena, in the Taos Youth and Family Center, 407 Paseo del Cañon East.

Allen Palmer, a Taos senior, is one of the best hockey players in New Mexico. He’s played on travel teams in tournaments across the West and a national tournament in Michigan.

Palmer has played against Canadian teams before and thinks his Taos team can give them a good game.

“Our main thing is we’re fast,” he said. “As long as we play good man-to-man and take our breaks when they come, we can definitely skate with these guys.”

Palmer admitted the Canadian team carries a mystique, just because they’re Canadian.

“As a Canadian team, they carry that name with them. Everybody wants to be able to say they beat a Canadian team, so we’re all gearing up for that extra game.”

“We know everybody wants to beat us,” said Tyler Caron, the Saints’ captain. “We come in knowing that, but we’re prepared.”

Batters laughed when asked about the so-called mystique.

“It’s kind of interesting; when we got the schedule they had us down as Team Canada,” he said. “We saw that and said, ‘oh, oh.’”

Kenora is actually a town of 15,000 people roughly 100 miles north of Minnesota, and St. Thomas Aquinas has an enrollment of 650 students in grades 7 through 12. The Saints play at one of the lower levels of high school hockey in Canada.

Even so, the mystique is deserved. The Kenora Thistles won the Stanley Cup in 1907. Native Mike Richards played on the Los Angeles Kings team that won the Cup last year.

Batters does acknowledge the Saints feel a little like they are representing their country.

“We don’t know how it’ll go,” he said, adding that his team has never played seven games in a four-day span, and fatigue could be a factor. “A lot of our kids mentioned they could feel the altitude. It was definitely harder to breathe out there.”
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal