The Fighting Saints are a club hockey team from the area that isn’t affiliated with any high school but has been thriving in the Kansas City Youth Hockey Association.
A group of Fighting Saints celebrates after a big play in the Kansas City Youth Hockey Association.
The Saints have 22 total teams of all ages, ranging from an Under 8 age group all the way up to the high school level. Nick Turcotte has been the Fighting Saints’ Director of Hockey the last two years and has been a big part of player development.
“Normally when you coach a team, you might coach two teams in one season, but having 22 teams, there’s a little bit more going on. My operations as the director have a little bit more to do with hanging out with coaches, teaching them the ropes and having their understanding about what kind of drills and what kind of developing we want from kids,” Turcotte said.
While there are numerous teams varying from different ages, there are two teams for high school aged athletes. The Saints have a varsity and junior varsity (JV) team that some teenagers in the Kansas City area play on since there aren’t opportunities through their schools.
“Kansas City is kind of an amalgam, they do things a little bit differently, there’s no Saints’ High School, but there is a Saints’ high school team. The high school bracket is a division, it’s not necessarily affiliated with a high school, it’s just high school aged players,” Turcotte said.
While there are athletes that are from all over that play for the Saints, there are two from Platte County High School: freshman Dane Post and sophomore Jason Papacek. They are both on JV, as most underclassmen are, but the Saints have two freshmen on the varsity team, Zachary Halling and Lucian Buckland.
Haakon Bredesen gets ready for a face-off.
“JV is another one of those taboo things where you could have a senior play JV, but it’s usually a lot more 15, 16 and 17 year olds, where varsity teams should be 17 or 18 for the most part. Very rarely are their younger kids on varsity, but this year we have two that are really good hockey players, but it’s not an easy feat to play with kids four years older,” Turcotte said.
There is a tryout process to divide the players on different teams, but there are no roster cuts made so they are considered placements. This process usually happens in August, before practices for the season begin.
“Tryouts are usually done through placements, which are essentially when kids will show up over the course of anywhere from an hour to four hours. We’ll place them on the appropriate teams on a skill level, and sometimes it’s other things; for example, this year we had two players that needed to play on a team because of a carpool situation. We have players from Topeka, Fort Riley and Columbia, so they’re coming from some different areas, and they have their own requirements,” Turcotte said.
The Saints consider themselves a house developmental program, so they take everybody who wants to join. They also have a learn-to-play program and have two different styles of practices in the season.
“We practice anywhere from two to three times a week on the ice, and then for about two hours off ice, which usually consists of 45 minutes of conditioning followed by 45 minutes of video and 45 minutes of what we call physician practices. Essentially an on-ice practice with tennis shoes on a basketball court is a little bit more like running through more of a style of play,” Turcotte said.
The Saints play in Line Creek Community Center in Gladstone and the office facility is the North Kansas City YMCA. Turcotte said the Saints are very appreciative of the YMCA.
“They’re also one of our partners; if we have internal meetings with the board or coaches’ meetings and stuff of that nature, we usually use the YMCA because they have lots of rooms for us to use. They also have a high-end video tech lab, which is where we do most of our film review,” Turcotte said.
The Saints’ season ends after the playoffs – which is currently happening, going on with 11 varsity and 10 JV teams that qualified at the Cable Dahmer Arena in Independence – but there are multiple offseason options. The Saints have three different options for the spring offseason, which technically goes from April 8 to June 25, according to Turcotte.
Dane Post is a freshman from Platte County High School who plays for the Saints.
“One option is we have a tournament team that goes out of town, then we have a four-on-four team, which essentially is kind of like half-court basketball for ice hockey where we take it back when possession changes. We also have a spring hockey program, which is mostly about skill development and how to utilize the skills that you learn,” Turcotte said.
While the high schoolers play at the highest level in the league, there are larger rosters in the younger age groups. The Saints have a player as young as 4-years old and have had multiple athletes go through the program from a young age all the way to the end of their high school careers.
“The way that it’s broken down, the majority of your players that play at that age group is coming out of your program. Very rarely are players transferring from one program to another at that age,” Turcotte said.
The Saints will be hosting a tri-hockey event open to the public at Line Creek Community Center on Feb. 25 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. That will be an opportunity for any athletes interested in joining the program or the sport to come and learn more about it.