SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — There was a time in the not too distant past where Flin Flon Bombers head coach Mike Reagan began to wonder if there was some sort of a curse surrounding the team.
Season after season filled success all the way up until the final rounds of the playoffs, where each year — despite their talent and tons of wins along the way — the Bombers would end up falling short of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League championship.
Until now.
The Bombers claimed their first SJHL title in 33 years a little over a week ago, defeating the Yorkton Terriers in four games in the league final. As a result, the Flin Flon crew now find themselves in Summerside, P.E.I., less than a day away from opening their appearance at the Centennial Cup national Junior A hockey championship.
With all the near misses and close calls when it came to returning to the top of the SJHL, the Bombers organization actually actively searched for a potential item or thing that could be the cause of it all — even briefly turning against the legendary moose leg at one point — before figuring out the real culprit.
Reagan joined The SportsCage earlier this week for a lengthy interview covering all things Bombers and the Centennial Cup, and he was happy to reveal the cause of Flin Flon’s former bad luck.
“It’s our old bus,” Reagan said. “There’s no question that you think ‘how have we not found a way to win’, being to the league final five times before this and three out of the last four years. We got rid of it right before the playoffs, we got a new bus that we brought up from California, and that bus is 1-and-0. That’s what we’re blaming it on, and we’re thinking about driving the old one off of a cliff into an old mine… We didn’t do that, we needed that as a back-up in case something goes wrong, but yeah, it was the bus’s fault.”
All that is, of course, very tongue in cheek. As any team in the SJHL will tell you, winning a league championship is as difficult a task as there is in Junior A hockey, requiring everything to come together at the perfect time, and after so many near misses in recent years, 2026 finally saw it happen for the veteran coach and his crew.
The real key was a team built on size, balance and overall team skill. They were able to take advantage of having a beefy defensive corps by smothering teams all season in their legendary home rink, the Whitney Forum, and throwing wave after wave at their opponents until they finally broke through. Something that happened more often than not on their way to their league-best 41-11-3-1 regular season record.
“Going into this season, we knew we didn’t have a superstar, we didn’t have a guy who was going to lead the league in scoring or points,” Reagan began by way of explaining their lethal depth. “We knew we’d have to do it by committee, and if you go through our roster, we have a ton of guys between the 25- to 50-point range, and on any given night it’s a new guy that’s scoring. I love that we’re not relying on one line or a couple guys to score for us, every night it’s a different guy. That’s kind of been our recipe, we’ve kind of built a team that’s well balanced.”
A major key to that is finding players who fit into their system. Reagan has had no fear when it comes to scouring far and wide to find that talent and that includes taking advantage of a Quebec connection that has brought a slew of elite talent into Flin Flon in recent years.
That included rookie forwards Nathan Lalumiere and Maverick Deslisle — who finished fifth in team scoring with 16 goals and 42 points in 40 games — along with defenceman Natan Muenier and veteran rearguard Xavier Fauchon.
“We’ve kind of always went back to the well there, and we’ve built such a good reputation that kids out there want to come here,” said Reagan, who developed the Quebec pipeline while playing two seasons in La Belle Province.
The Bombers were led in scoring by hometown product Joey Lies, who put up 27 goals and 54 points in 48 games despite battling injury. Forward Connor Miller — the SJHL Playoffs MVP — led the team in playoff scoring with nine goals and 15 points in their 15 games, and SJHL goaltender of the year Charlie Tritt has been a brick wall in net, recording four shutouts while winning 11 of 14 playoff starts.
With the league title wrapped up, the Bombers have turned their full attention to the national tournament, with puck drop on Thursday. Flin Flon plays their first game on Friday at 9 a.m. Saskatchewan time when they take on Quebec champion College Francais de Longueuil.
“My assistant coaches have done a tremendous job so far, they’re at their computers day and night and I’m dealing more with the logistics,” said Reagan, who was also behind the bench when Flin Flon made their last Centennial Cup appearance as Saskatchewan representatives in 2022 in Estevan.
“We’ve been to the Centennial Cup once, and when it comes down to it, you have to be ready to adjust on the fly. Everything is going to happen quickly, and if things don’t go well for you one day, you can’t let it follow up and affect you the next day. Just have to have that short memory.”
Flin Flon continues pool play in the 10-team tournament on Saturday at 1 p.m. against the OJHL’s Toronto Patriots, Monday at 9 a.m. against the NOJHL’s Greater Sudbury Cubs and Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. against the MHL’s Truro Bearcats.
The top two teams from each pool receive a bye to the semifinal, with the second and third place teams playing in the quarter-finals on Friday, May 15. The semifinals take place Saturday, May 16th, followed by the championship final at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 17.
Flin Flon’s last league championship trip to nationals came in 1993 in Amherst, P.E.I., where they went winless, and their 2022 appearance saw the Bombers fall in the quarter-finals.
As one might expect, finding a way to bring home the Centennial Cup would be beyond special for a community that lives and breathes the Bombers.
“We’ve been thinking about that over the last 10 days, and just seeing the response from winning the SJHL, I can’t even imagine what it will be like to win a national championship,” Reagan said. “The pressure to win in Flin Flon is enormous, and when we haven’t won it in 33 years and being so close so many times, I felt like the weight of the smokestack here in Flin Flon is off my shoulders.
“I couldn’t even imagine what a national championship would do for not only Flin Flon, but the SJHL. Yeah, at the end of the day we’re representing Flin Flon and Bomber Nation, but now we’re also carrying the SJHL flag and we want to represent the league the right way. Hopefully we can do what the Yorkton Terriers did for the league 10 years ago.”
You can follow along with all the scores from the Centennial Cup at www.hockeycanada.ca.
