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Logan flying high in first year with North Stars

Nov 8, 2016 | 1:00 PM

If you guessed the North Stars’ leading scorer through 20 games of the 2016-17 season would be Layne Young, you’d be right.

Well, half right.

Sitting atop the team points lead along with last year’s rookie of the year is a new name: Connor Logan.

Logan, who grew up on Vancouver Island in the small town of Lake Cowichan, B.C., has 22 points this season in 21 games. Last season, while playing for the Prince George Spruce Kings of the BCHL, he had 19 points in 53 games.

It’s a stark difference for the 20-year-old, who immediately made an impression the moment he came into training camp with his blinding speed.

“It’s different teams, different years,” Logan said. “You go through some adjustments and last year our team went through quite a few and we didn’t make the playoffs. It was just kind of a tough year for the group.”

Last season, the Spruce Kings were young and then they lost their captain at the trade deadline. Plus, there’s the travel, which Logan brushes off, but must have taken a toll on the team after a while.

Because of where Prince George is located, more than 750 km North of Vancouver, the shortest road trip for Logan and his teammates last year was six and a half hours. Some trips, like the one to Wenatchee, which is in Washington State, are 13 hours.

That’s quite the travel for a divisional matchup.

“You’ve got to get used to the bus,” Logan said. “It’s not the ideal situation on a day you play but you just try to get a nap in I guess. They’re all right. They’re shorter this year so it’s a lot better.”

Former North Stars head coach and general manager Kevin Hasselberg made the move to acquire Logan from the B.C. league this past off-season, in exchange for future considerations.

It paid off immediately, as Logan built on his strong pre-season to post nine points in his first seven games as a North Star. But when Coby Downs returned from the USHL, Logan was bumped to the second line.

At first, Logan’s stats stalled – just a bit – while playing with Brett Horn and Keaton Holinaty. He had just two points in the first five games following Downs’ return.

But then the line began to click. Logan has posted eight points in his last five games, while Horn and Holinaty each have four points in their last five.

“We’re just doing a good job of getting pucks to each other I think,” Logan said. “Holinaty has a good shot; he’s good in the corners. Horn can move the puck really well and he’s a good skater and we just try to play off of each other as much as we can and we just go to the right areas.”

So where are the “right areas?”

“Going to the net,” he said. “If you look at most of our goals, they were pretty close to the net. We’re not getting one-timers from the top of circles. It’s all pretty much below the dots and we’re working down there and getting to the net.”

The secondary scoring the second line has provided for the team has been one of the main reasons the North Stars have won eight straight games and currently sit first in the league with a 16-5-0 record. Logan and Horn are two of 12 North Stars to have scored a game-winning-goal this season, the most of any team in the league.

Depth is one thing, but Logan thinks the reason for the team’s success is something not measured on the ice.

“The belief in the room,” he said. “We block everything out and we believe in each other in the room. We all believe in each other absolutely.”

The North Stars are certainly rolling with that mentality, but there’s still a lot of hockey to be played this season, and this year is Logan’s last eligible year of junior.

After this year, Logan is clear cut with what he wants to do: become a strength and conditioning coach and hopefully open up his own gym. That kind of certainty isn’t always the case in 20-year-olds who have spent their whole lives playing hockey. It also isn’t that surprising, given that Logan’s go to pre-game meal is the balanced (and quite healthy) meal of chicken, veggies, and quinoa.

With that goal in mind, hockey could very well continue because one way to become a strength trainer is to take kinesiology courses. That means Logan, like many other junior A players, hopes to get a scholarship for hockey.

A couple of schools have already reached out to Logan, though nothing is definitive yet. If a scholarship doesn’t pan out, Logan is still set on making his goal happen.

“Start applying for schools wherever I think the best spot would be to get the strength and conditioning coach thing rolling,” he said.

If he keeps up his play of late, however, he won’t have to worry about applying, as more and more schools will surely come knocking.

 

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11