Patience is paying off in a return to the herd en masse. The Okotoks Bisons are the benefactors of the Junior B hockey version of a year abroad with the return of four hometown skaters who spent last season in British Columbia’s Kootenay International Junior Hockey League. “We love the local kids on our team,” said Bisons head coach Chris Beston. “We encourage them to stay around, but we understand they want to move away from home and enjoy that junior hockey experience. “As long as they come back to us when they’re 19 or 20, we’re happy with it.” Hard-nosed forward Brandt Black is wearing the Bisons uniform for the first time after skating last season in picturesque Invermere with the KIJHL’s Columbia Valley Rockies. “The team out there had their core together and it wasn’t really fitting my style of play,” he said. “It was definitely a different pace of hockey out there, a lot of fun, made a lot of good friends out there. Great billets out there, the town loved the hockey, everybody supported.” He brings a strong family connection to the Bisons with his father Dean serving several executive roles for the team over the years. “I would always be the puck boy, coming out after warm-up,” Brandt said. “I would help around the rink with the boys, went on some road trips with them. “It’s kind of surreal growing up with the team and now playing with them.” Okotoks’ Devyn Stewart teetered on the edge of a second season with the Fernie Ghostriders, but had a change of heart late in the summer. “I had the opportunity to comeback and play in my hometown, in the rink I grew up playing in,” said Stewart, a 1999 born forward. “And I just thought what a cool experience it would be to come back and finish my last couple years of junior hockey with some of the guys I grew up playing with. “It’s a team that’s been looking at me for a while and I felt like I owed it to them to come back and give it my best.” Stewart had 13 points in his rookie season with the Ghostriders. The season was marred by the tragic incident at the Fernie Memorial Arena in which three individuals were killed as a result of an ammonia leak in the building. The Ghostriders played their home games in nearby Sparwood and played a big role in lifting up the community. “Going through everything that happened in Fernie with the tragedy that went down, it made me better as a teammate,” Stewart said. “How often we had to help out in the community, how close we all had to get together and the stuff we had to do to get the community back up and give it back to them for all the support they gave us. “We weren’t a big winning team, but we did have our games where we fought really hard and we did it all for the town. It was a good, character building year.” DeWinton’s Jagger Thiessen is back on the Murray Arena ice after taking a year off from the game. The energetic forward spent the 2016-17 season with the Rockies. “It was an awesome town to play, a good group of guys,” Thiessen said. “It’s really competitive, great development league to move players to the next level. “It was having some buddies on this (Bisons) team and a bit of pressure from the coach, I’m glad they reached out to me and I was able to have another chance to play again.” Smooth-skating defenceman Mitch Wolfe is also back playing in his hometown after two productive seasons in the KIJHL with the Creston Valley Thundercats. “We don’t discourage them, we say we’re always here for you down the road if something changes,” the coach added. “The beauty of our league is you can play as a 21-year-old. They come back when they’re 20, like Mitch Wolfe and he gets one extra year of junior hockey. You can have the best of both worlds.” On the Bison opening day lineup four local players were new to the team after extended stints in B.C. Second-year Bisons Dallas Otto and Tyler Bordt also joined the team in 2017-18 from similar backgrounds. “They’re skill guys, character guys,” Beston said. “You’re playing for your hometown now and there’s that pride. That’s what we enjoy about it, we see that pride is in their faces and it’s nice to see that again.”
