After leading the Carleton Ravens men’s hockey team to an Ontario University Athletics (OUA) bronze medal and its first University Cup appearance since 2015-16, head coach Shaun Van Allen was voted the winner of the Charlatan’s Readers’ Choice Award for top Ravens head coach.
Receiving an overwhelming 97 per cent of the 1,927 submitted votes, Van Allen (1,865 votes) bested men’s soccer coach Kwesi Loney (one vote), men’s curling coach Tom Sinclair (four votes), women’s rugby coach Patrick Thompson (46 votes), and men’s basketball coach Dave Smart (11 votes) to earn the award.
Van Allen completed his first year as the permanent men’s hockey coach after having served in 2017-18 with an interim tag. He coached the Ravens to an 18-5-2 record in the 2018-19 regular season, good for second place in the OUA East standings.
In the OUA playoffs, the Ravens captured the bronze medal with a 3-0 win over the Western University Mustangs on March 8.
After qualifying for the national University Cup, the Ravens were eliminated in the quarter-finals after a 2-1 loss to the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Varsity Reds on March 15.
Van Allen said his team and support staff played an instrumental role in helping him to win the Readers’ Choice Award.
“I don’t think it’s a Coach of the Year award—I think it’s a team award,” Van Allen said. “You can’t do it without the players and the other coaches.”
This year was seen as a season of change for the Ravens men’s hockey team. Former centre Brett Welychka, who led the 2017-18 Ravens in scoring, signed with the American Hockey League’s Rockford IceHogs prior to this past season, leaving the team with a hole at centre ice.
Further to the loss of their top scorer, the Ravens were without the services of other contributors, including veterans Ryan Van Stralen, Fabian Walsh, Derek Brown, and David Weckworth who all graduated last year.
Prior to the season, Van Allen planned to offset these losses with the addition of 10 new players into the lineup, envisioning the Ravens as a “four-line team” that would “not count on one line to do the majority of the scoring.”
Additionally, the Ravens’ roster featured 11 ten-point scorers in 2018-19, two more than it had in 2017-18.
Entering the 2019-20 season, Van Allen’s team once again faces challenges. The Ravens are set to lose star goaltender Francois Brassard, team captain Hayden Hulton, alternate captains Dalen Hedges, Brett Gustavsen, and Adam Chapman, and forward Travis Douglas.
Van Allen said he sees a busy summer ahead for his staff as they try to replicate the success of last season.
“It starts with recruiting,” Van Allen said. “We’re trying to get more kids to come in, to show them Ottawa, to show them our campus. You can’t win without good players.”
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