NAHL Season Preview and Rooting Interests
Welcome to our season preview post! The NAHL plays games six days a week, Monday-Saturday, for eleven weeks, for a total of sixty-six regular season games. To figure out your rooting interest, and to learn a little more about each team, we’ve listed information about each of the teams below.
Teams
Aquae Sulis Bears
Colors: red and black
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: C Cal Malone, RW Nick May
Description: Aquae Sulis is a club that is defined by their aggressive style of play. They like their d-men to play high and their forwards to forecheck aggressively. They’re not likely to stand around and pass the puck one to another, waiting for an opportunity. They like to generate odd-man rushes. They’re a fun team to watch, but their style means they concede a lot. Last season, they conceded 196 goals, the most in recent history. Two seasons ago, they finished one spot out of the playoffs, but usually, they find themselves in the bottom half. If you like underdogs and goals, the Bears are your team. Their chief rival is the neighboring city of Portus Abonae.
Durovernum Cantiacorum (DC) Oilers
Colors: black and orange
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: C Julian Stephens, G Ted Carpenter
Description: DC is home to the largest oil refinery in the country, hence the Oilers nickname. DC is a team that lives and dies with their goalkeeper. Netminder Ted Carpenter is one of their key players because of his leadership capabilities. An NHL washout who was serving as an Oilers employee and emergency goaltender when he was needed for a period and a half because of a fluke accident and turned in an amazing performance. He was signed the next day and gradually moved up to first string. He’s not the best, but he’s a true leader and teammate. The Oilers are always in the hunt, even making it to the championship series three seasons ago before succumbing to Isca Town. If you like inspirational stories and want a team that will compete, choose the Oilers. Their chief rivals are the teams from Vinovium and Noviomagus.
Eboracum Sharpshooters
Colors: green and gold
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: LW Glen Gray, RW Tim Smith
Description: Eboracum is the Latin for the place of the yew trees, so the Sharpshooters nickname harkens back to the yew longbows of England. And the Sharpshooters deserve their nickname, finishing 1st in goals four of the past seven years, and always in the top three. Their top line wings, Glen Gray and Tim Smith, combined for the most goals by two wing players in the league. They are even more aggressive than Aquae Sulis, but they’re better at it and are typically a playoff contender. As the second city in the country, they are typically rivals with the Londinium Royals, from the capital.
Isca Town Captains
Colors: teal and white
Recent Championships: 1
Key players: D Louis Tremblay, D Jason Gross
Description: The Captains are last year’s champions, with a best-ever record of 56-6-4. They were practically untouchable in the regular season last year. They found the perfect combination of competent offense and stifling defense that they love. Their top pairing of Tremblay and Gross is a study in contrasts: Tremblay is the captain, the consummate defenseman, while Gross is the two-way player, almost more comfortable on offense than on defense. They are always contenders, finishing first or second six of the past seven years. That regular season success hasn’t usually translated into championships, though. Last season, when they were dominant in the regular season, they were swept by their chief rivals, the Pons Aelius Steelers in the championship series. In fact, in three of four finals series they’ve made, they’ve faced the Steelers and lost every single one. Kind of like the LA Dodgers of the NAHL in the sense that they haven’t turned regular season success into postseason glory. They have made their small city very proud, and a force to be reckoned with every year.
Labrador Caribou
Colors: green and white
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: C Victor Hall, G Dave Francis
Description: The Caribou are the smaller team from Labrador, and usually operating on a shoe-string budget. Maybe that’s why their biggest finish in recent history is sixth. More often they find themselves in the seventh to ninth range. The Caribou want to play a style like Isca Town, with strong defense and good enough offense, but like Aquae Sulis and Eboracum, the talent gap is too big for them to do that. Their defense is fine, what they lack is offense. Victor Hall, their first-line center, is an excellent offensive player and their points leader, but the talent around him just isn’t there. The default rooting option for First Nations peoples in Nova Anglicana.
Londinium Royals
Colors: gold and royal blue
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: LW Eric Benson, C Sheldon Cook
Description: For a club that comes from the capital, the Royals are awfully mediocre. They have finished sixth in five of the last seven seasons. They just can never seem to get over the hump. But they are a younger team hoping to break through after finishing just two points out last season. Eric Benson and Sheldon Cook are just twenty-four and twenty-three, respectively, and have made a big show this offseason of talking up the Royals’ chances. If you’re used to rooting for a team that will tantalize you with their potential, but usually disappoint you, consider the Royals.
Mancunium Raiders
Colors: burgundy and white
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: C Quinn Baird, G Heath Lindsay
Description: Despite being the bigger-budget and bigger-city club from Labrador, the Raiders are typically worse than the Caribou. They often lack the goal-scoring punch and the stoppers needed to really succeed. But this season, ownership opened the check book to sign Steelers backup goaltender Heath Lindsay for probably more than he’s worth, and lured center Quinn Baird away from Portus Abonae with a fat payday. They are looking to these two players to provide leadership and success, coming from two excellent teams. If the gamble pays off, Mancunium could be a dark horse this year. But if these two can’t elevate the rest of the team, then it will have been a waste of money.
Newfield Rangers
Colors: blue and green
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: G Augustin Gauthier, D Graham Drummond
Description: Unlike Noviomagus’ other sports teams, including their excellent football/soccer team, the Rangers have not experienced success in recent years. Their highest finish has been seventh, twelve points out of the playoffs. Their defense isn’t too shabby, but their offense is often poor. And when they do get some offense, their defense usually suffers. Some of this is poor drafting, with multiple first-round busts in recent history. Some of it’s the lack of continuity, with four head coaches in the last seven years. But ownership is backing Teddy Clegg, the current head man, so maybe he’ll have a chance to put his stamp on the team and lead them to mediocrity, if not the playoffs.
Pons Aelius Steelers
Colors: black and silver
Recent Championships: 5
Key players: D Dirk Ziegler, G Brett McQueen
Description: The Steelers are almost always in the bottom half of goals scored, but they like it that way. After five championships in recent history, they’re the villains of the NAHL, but they like it that way. The Steelers prefer to grind their opponents into the dust, destroying their will with a never-ending series of 1-0 victories. They’re veterans, comfortable in OT or in shootouts. They sacrifice the body, always rotate on defense, and are seemingly wizards at deflections and tip-ins, “accidental goals”. If you like goals or hate power teams, don’t root for them. But they probably don’t care. This is a machine built to win championships and crush hopes. Special rivals with Isca Town.
Portus Abonae Privateers
Colors: red and gold
Recent Championships: 1
Key players: C Jordon Upshaw, D Scottie Richards
Description: As their piratical nickname might imply, the Privateers are fun to watch. They manage to score goals without completely sacrificing their defense like Eboracum, while being good enough to manage an attacking strategy, unlike Aquae Sulis. They are a bit more measured than either of those clubs, but still rank highly in goals scored. They returned to the playoffs last year after a two-year hiatus (one year they couldn’t defend enough, the other their attack was lacking), but were promptly swept by Isca Town. If you’re looking for a fun, competitive team, you could do worse than the Privateers.
Sept-Iles Whalers
Colors: blue and gunmetal gray
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: RW Gaston Fortin, D Marc Levesque
Description: It has been a tough slog for the Whalers the last few years. The past two years, they’ve been dead last, and haven’t finished higher than 10th recently. The Quebecois community supports them fiercely, but they just haven’t been able to break through at all. Their attack is fair, if not spectacular, but they’ve struggled to develop defensive talent and keep their netminders healthy. They’re hopeful that their latest young core, including Fortin, and Levesque, can help them make a big jump this year.
Vinovium Lumberjacks
Colors: green and black
Recent Championships: 0
Key players: G Mel Pinson, C Parker Martindale
Description: The Lumberjacks are an up-and-down second-tier club. Some years, they’ve managed to be fairly competitive, finishing only eight points out of the playoffs a couple years ago. But they can’t follow it up, usually. They did improve by 15 points last year, and their exciting C prospect Martindale will be fully healthy this year after missing 82 games over the past two seasons. Why root for the Lumberjacks? Well, they’re overshadowed in their own city by the NABL (baseball)’s Vinovium Gunners. The football/soccer team and the basketball team stink too. The Lumberjacks are playing with a chip on their shoulder and a desire to be something other than mediocre, to rise up and challenge the status quo. Their roster reflects that too, a lot of hard-luck veterans hoping for one more chance at glory and guys too young to have been beaten down by losing. The city’s loyalty is up for grabs, and they intend to win it.
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