Steinbach Pistons reload after key departures

By some accounts, the 2024/2025 season was the worst season for the Steinbach Pistons in over a decade. The last year the team didn’t at least win one playoff series was in 2011/2012, the year before they won their first Manitoba Junior Hockey League championship.

It was still a strong season on the ice, with the Pistons finishing second in the league standings behind Winkler and boasting their first-ever league most valuable player winner in Connor Paronuzzi.

Steinbach head coach and general manager Paul Dyck called camp, “encouraging,” this year as the team looks to get back to their winning ways in the playoffs.

“It’s been a difficult process to cut down, and that’s a positive thing from a coaching staff’s perspective,” Dyck said in an interview Sept. 16, just before the team’s final training camp cuts were made.

“We had some really good players in camp, guys that wanted to be here. It’s never easy to say good-bye to players who; one, wanted to be here, chose to be at our training camp and two, that they have potential to be very good players in our league, but they may not have that opportunity with us this year.”

Plenty of the firepower from last year’s team is now gone, including Paronuzzi, despite his eligibility to return. None of Paronuzzi, Mathis Laplante, Grady Hoffman and Brayden Berg are in camp for Steinbach.

On the back end, the team is missing Oakbank’s Reece Gault alongside Shane Burns, Cale Quamme and Luke Bogart, who all have junior eligibility remaining.

“There’s definitely a freshness to this camp,” Dyck said when asked if he prefers high turnover or low turnover years as a coach.

“We have the ability to shape the group… There’s some more teaching that’s required, but I think most coaches enjoy that process. When a player has been with you for two or three years you take for granted that they are understanding everything.”

Add in Jackson Kostiuk, who left mid-way through the season last year to play in the Western Hockey League, and the Pistons are missing more than 350 points from their line-up from players who would be eligible to return this year.

“Anybody that’s looking at our line-up from 24/25, they’re going to see a number of our key players that aren’t back here with us this year,” Dyck said, noting there was little set in stone to start training camp.

“(It was a) tremendous opportunity for guys that came to our camp this year to win spots and be a part of our club this year. If we did write in pen, we were crossing it out and putting other names in, but pencil was definitely the writing utensil of choice this fall.”

To complicate matters more, Cole Cairns, Eric Cote and Ryan McDonald will all be starting the season on the sidelines due to injuries.

There will still be championship experience on the Pistons this year, as Brett Kaiser, who played on the 2023 championship-winning Steinbach squad, is returning for his final year of junior eligibility. Sam Noad, who finished the season second on the team in scoring, was named team captain at the Pistons annual golf tournament.

Dyck said naming a captain so early made sense with Noad.

“We’ve witnessed the way he conducts himself both on and off the ice, and he’s what you would classify as an ‘everydayer,’” Dyck said.

“He puts in the time, there’s an intensity to his practices. There’s also the person he is as a player in the room. How good he is to the younger players when they arrive. We just felt he was a real good package in terms of representing us and wearing the ‘C.’”

Dyck as general manager stabilized Steinbach’s goaltending situation, nabbing former Brooks Bandits goaltender in 2005-born Chris Quizi via trade. In 13 games with Brooks last season in the B.C. Hockey League, Quizi put up a 10-1-2 record with a 0.913 save percentage. He even saw action in the playoffs, picking up a win.

“He’s been a great fit,” Dyck said.

“His character fits our group as well. He’s very personable so we were thankful we could add him to our line-up.”

Quizi will be an important piece for a team looking to dominate on the defensive side of the puck.

“We have a back-end that’s mobile, can move pucks and should defend well,” Dyck said.

“One of the things we always take pride in here is taking care of our own end. Our goals against is something that is important to us. Minimizing that number is always important to us. It’s hard to out-score your problems.”

The Pistons are cementing their rivalry with the Winkler Flyers, with the two teams creating the Knack-Zoat Cup, a trophy to be awarded to the winner of the season series annually and named for the Low German word for sunflower seeds.

Dyck added fans can expect an even better experience at the new Southeast Event Centre, noting the team was still figuring out how to present games there last year when they played a few games at the end of the season.

Steinbach opens the season with a home-and-home against the Flyers, with the Pistons hosting Winkler Sunday, Sept. 21 at 7 p.m.`