Niverville Nighthawks team structure sets them apart in MJHL

The Niverville Nighthawks don’t look like many other Manitoba Junior Hockey League franchises.

The team does not employ a combined head coach and general manager, as is the case for nearly every other MJHL team. They instead employ Dwight Hirst as head coach and Mike McAulay as general manager.

Niverville joined the league in 2022, initially hiring Kelvin Cech in a combined role with McAulay as assistant general manager. When the team parted ways with Cech in the middle of the 2023/2024 season, they turned to Hirst, who is from Lac du Bonnet, as their interim coach and promoted MacAulay to general manager, maintaining that structure ever since.

It paid off this year with a league championship and one of the strongest MJHL representatives in recent years at the national junior A championships. The Nighthawks went undefeated at the Centennial Cup en route to a national championship.

Hirst said the duo are in complete alignment, even working together this season to ensure they had light schedule early in the season so coaches could install a deeper gameplan and structure across the team.

“Mike and his scouting staff do a really good job of identifying players within our system,” Hirst said during the middle of the tournament, noting the duo met early on in their tenure with the team’s head of hockey operations, Kevin Lansard, to identify what kind of style Niverville should play.

“A lot of people now when they see the Nighthawks logo or see us play, they know what our identity is,” Hirst said.

“For us to have an identity you’ve got to find players that can play within that system.”

The Selkirk Steelers are the only other team in the MJHL that doesn’t have a combination head coach/general manager but head coach Hudson Friesen also serves as the team’s director of hockey operations, with no general manager even listed on the team’s staff page on their website.

“It’s an interesting structure, there’s pros and cons,” McAulay said during an off day at the Centennial Cup.

“The respect that I have for Dwight and Dwight has for me, it just works really well. We’re not a couple of yes-men. There’s some hard conversations behind closed doors about players but ultimately there’s just such a respect for each other that we get to where we need to get to.”

That unique structure paid off with an MJHL championship this season, although team president Clarence Braun said the decision to separate the two roles wasn’t by design.

“The fortunate thing for us is both (Hirst) and (McAulay) are independently well-off, in terms they have their own lives, they have their own businesses,” Braun said just before the start of a Nighthawks game at the Centennial Cup in Summerside, P.E.I.

“He didn’t need to be the guy making $80,000 or $100,000 a year. We kind of fell into it.”

The Nighthawks have worked hard to carry themselves as a top MJHL team with high expectations since joining as an expansion franchise in 2022.

“That starts with the board of directors and the people that came in and founded this team and put their hard-earned money into it to get it off the ground,” McAulay said.

“We have such a terrific volunteer base as well. They just want to be a part of it. They’re really selfless and they give a lot to our organization.”

McAulay put together a deep roster for Hirst to coach, chalk full of high quality Manitoba talent. He said the decision from top-end players to return to Niverville despite opportunities to play elsewhere sparked the team’s 2026 run.

“They had one thing in their mind when we got eliminated by Winkler in the first round (last year) and that was that taste they couldn’t get out of their mouths all summer,” MacAulay said.

“We went through that series with Winkler and watched the champion emerge from the Manitoba league, we felt we needed to get some pace and we needed to get some more tenacity in our forward group.”

The team also added three players with championship experience to help vault them into contender status, including a mid-season pick-up of Marlen Edwards via trade, who was the difference for the Nighthawks when they came out sluggish in the first game of the Centennial Cup.

Edwards scored two goals including the overtime winner as the rest of the team caught up to the national championship pace against the host Summerside Western Capitals after a couple weeks off.

“You need a hero every game now,” McAulay said.

It has been a complete reversal from the first few years of Niverville’s roster construction. With a lack of supplemental or expansion draft they had to rely heavily on American and out of province talent for their roster in the first couple years.

“People within our province recognize us as ‘hey, that’s a heck of a place to play hockey,’” McAulay said.

“(Players) put us on their list when they were looking for other options.”

Braun said the team had just three players from Manitoba on the permanent roster in the first season but this year the Nighthawks were one of the most Manitoba-heavy teams in the MJHL playoffs, including four players from the Eastman region.

“Mike’s intentionally built it this way,” Braun said.

“We think Manitoba players can compete and do well, and we’re excited to be here representing the MJHL with 14 Manitobans.”

Braun was shocked he’s in Summerside, watching a team he helped found just four years ago play at a national championship.

“I’m not sure it’s even hit me yet,” he said.

“I remember the game in Virden at the Turnbull Cup I’m sitting there after the final whistle, and you’ve won it. It’s kind of like wow… The guys have just shown up game after game after game all year.”

Braun said he began to think they had true championship potential right before Christmas and added that despite winning the Turnbull Cup, they came to the national championship with a sense of “unfinished business.”

Manitoba-based teams have won the Centennial Cup just three times before this season, with the Portage Terriers and Selkirk Steelers claiming titles in the 1970s, and the Terriers winning their second when they hosted in 2014.