(Piece written by SJHL Co-Director of Media Jamie Neugebauer)
The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League is a bridge from a young athlete’s hopes to their dreams.
Coltyn Sanderson dreamed of playing hockey for as long as he could, at the highest level he could, and from 2010 to 2012, the SJHL was a critical conduit that landed him exactly where he wanted to be.
Born in Moose Jaw, the son of Estevan Bruins and Weyburn Red Wings sniper and minor-pro journeyman Mike Sanderson, young Coltyn never felt like a sure thing to become a key cog on an NCAA championship-winning University of North Dakota team.
But in part because of the SJHL and the Weyburn Red Wings, he did.
“My hockey journey was much different, I think, than the average hockey journey or successful story,” he said on SJHL Insider.
“The end path, getting to North Dakota and walking out of that roster as a freshman when I did — and, you know, 16 NHL draft picks were on that team that year. I’m walking in there and looking back at it, when I was graduating high school, playing for the Weyburn Red Wings or for any Junior A team at that point would have been the dream come true. (It is just) amazing.”
Sanderson didn’t make the top minor hockey programmes in the province, but he ended up with the Saskatoon Crunch U18s, where great coaching invested in him.
His play earned him an invite to a Sask First Showcase event, where Weyburn legends Ronny Rumball and Dwight McMillan saw him.
They affiliated him for the 2009-10 season, where he played Junior B in Assiniboia for Coach Jeff Donnelly, but also played a few regular-season and post-season games for the Wings, and impressed enough to become a regular SJHLer the next year.
Today, there is much talk of players quitting before they work to earn a spot wherever they can. Not Coltyn.
“When you just love the game, and you just want to play,” he says, “you’ll play wherever will give you a jersey.”
“And as an 18-year-old that year, I was fortunate. Dwight McMillan and Ron Rumball saw something, believed in me…and just getting to Weyburn was honestly the dream for me. And without Dwight and without Ron and great teammates and players there, (my whole career) never would have happened.”
Sanderson was named captain of the Wings ahead of the 2011-12 campaign and dominated, finishing third in league scoring with 81 points in 57 games.
Weyburn flew through the post-season but ran into Coach Dean Brockman’s mighty Humboldt Broncos in the final, a team led by future American Hockey League and European pro Andrew Johnston.
Although they fell short of the championship, it was an experience Coltyn will never forget.
“I’ll never forget people were sitting in the aisles at the old Coliseum,” he says, “and the feeling in that building just gave me goosebumps thinking back to it. It’s a long time ago now, and you can still feel it. It was just awesome.”
Without an agent or advisor, Sanderson still caught the eye of several NCAA DI programmes because of his play and the advocacy of Rumball and McMillan.
He was considering his options, but when North Dakota came calling late in the game, it was an offer he could not refuse.
“I was so fortunate, lucky that year to have several opportunities down south. But when North Dakota came in, a little bit later in the process, it was eye-opening that someone like myself could go to a place that is trying to compete for national championships every year.
“Losing in the final in Weyburn that year was a huge reason why I wanted to go to North Dakota,” he says.
“I understood going in that I wasn’t an NHL draft pick; I was far from it. And it was not going to be easy to get playing time. But I was going to go to a place where you were treated like you’re in the National Hockey League. They would develop you whether you were a first-round pick or somebody like me.
“And you had a chance (to win),” he continues.
“The goal every year down here is a national championship, and anything short of that is disappointment, especially for the fans around here, but even more so in the locker room. So going to North Dakota, I knew it would be a challenge, but it was one where I was really excited for who I’d be surrounded by.”
During his UND career, he played with future NHLers like Troy Stetcher, Nick Schmaltz, and Brock Boeser, among many others. On April 9, 2016, he helped lead the team that defeated Quinnipiac in the National Championship game on an NHL ice surface in Tampa Bay, FL.
After graduating with his Business Administration degree and playing in 35 games that championship season, Sanderson played a handful of games for the Idaho Steelheads of the ECHL.
He did not have the same emotions and enjoyment playing as a minor professional mercenary as he did when he represented Weyburn and North Dakota, so he decided he did not want the nomadic, unsettled life of a minor pro player, on top of lingering injury issues, and moved back to Saskatchewan and the workforce.
At the same time, he connected with his friend Trevor Weisgerber (now the coach of the Moose Jaw U18AAA) in the Moose Jaw area and got into coaching through him.
Having met his now-wife Laurel, who is from the town of East Grand Forks just on the Minnesota side of the border from Grand Forks, ND, in college, he moved back south of the border to work as a Financial Advisor and an assistant coach at the major Minnesota high school hockey programme at East Grand Forks High.
Laurel and Coltyn married in 2019, and they have a two-year-old daughter and another child on the way.
He runs hockey skates for high-level players in the area in the summers, and a spring hockey programme called ‘On the River’, and remains strongly connected to the enormous and impressive group of UND alumni.
“(I could not have done any of it and am full of) gratitude for the opportunities I had in Weyburn,” he says.
“(It’s just like how I feel about the opportunities) that I had in North Dakota. It’s the same thing, and those don’t happen without people’s support. I think that resiliency, perseverance, hard work, whether you’re playing hockey or whether you’re selling houses, whatever you’re doing in life, those traits are more important than what you’re doing, or how high a level you’re doing it at.”
For the kid from Moose Jaw who just wanted to play more hockey and ended up winning an NCAA D1 championship, the SJHL was the bridge, and he never forgets to cherish that part of his story.
