Mitch Calvert
Former Muskie goalie Neil Cooper was inducted into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in Thunder Bay over the weekend as a member of the 1991-92 Thunder Bay Flyers that brought the city a national Junior ‘A’ championship that season.
“It was pretty neat,” the 35-year-old chiropractor said of his chance to reconnect with old teammates at the induction ceremony. “It was nice to relive a bit of glory and see a lot of guys I haven’t seen up to 16 years now.”
The Flyers actually played in the United States Hockey League, the top tier of junior hockey in the States, after the collapse of the Thunder Bay Junior Hockey League in 1984.
Despite playing their regular seasons in the U.S., the team returned to Canada to compete against the Ontario Provincial Junior ‘A’ Hockey League and the Northwestern Ontario Junior Hockey League representatives for the Dudley Hewitt Cup and the right to represent Ontario at the Centennial Cup.
The Flyers won the Dudley Hewitt Cup that season to advance to the national showdown.
They went 2-2 during the round-robin portion, defeating the St. James Canadians 7-4 and the Winkler Flyers 9-2 while losing to the Vernon Lakers 5-4 in overtime and the Halifax Mooseheads 9-3.
But they got their ultimate redemption on the Mooseheads in the semi-finals, winning handily 8-1, before routing Winkler 10-1 in the final.
“We just had the right group of guys, and in the coach’s words [Dave Siciliano], it wasn’t that we were the most talented, and we certainly weren’t the biggest, but we just had a good group of guys that meshed well,” Cooper remarked.
Cooper, the son of Dale and Mary Cooper of Fort Frances, said a good number of his Flyers’ teammates went on to Division I schools in the States while his hockey path took him to St. Cloud State University just outside the Twin Cities.
He spent four years doing his undergrad in biology, with two of those years splitting time between the pipes for the school’s hockey team.
He later attended Bemidji State University, where he would win a national Division II title.
Only one teammate from that Flyers’ team, Darcy Mitani, still has a hockey career going. He plays in Japan, and recently was named to the Japanese national team.
Cooper credited the Muskie program for paving the way to his junior and college hockey tenures.
“We won the all-Ontarios in ’89, and the program was awesome for development,” Cooper lauded. “Back then, our Muskie teams were exceptionally strong, and it was fun to be a young feller on those teams in Grade 9, 10, and 11.”
Those years also were an influence that carved his future career path into chiropractic work.
“When I played in the Muskie program here, there was a chiropractor in the Falls who’s still there, Gary Potter, and he acted as a trainer for us back then and that’s really what stirred my interest,” Cooper noted.
