The Success Starts Here series features profiles on SJHL Alumni who are currently, or have played hockey at a post-secondary institution. Check out the full interviews every Thursday on the SJHL Insider Podcast and check back at SJHL.ca for profile pieces Wednesdays.
True, the decade is only half over, but it would take some doing to unseat the 2022-23 Battlefords North Stars as the team of the decade in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.
A 99-point regular season, and only two defeats in the postseason, if you include a tight loss in the national championship final to the behemoth Brooks Bandits.
Smack dab in the middle of all that success was Kian Bell, the MVP of that season and the one after.
To a normal person, carrying the mantle of that expectation might have been a lot.
But not to the 2003-born native of Nova Scotia.
“Yeah, to be honest, I feel like I’ve had to deal with different types of pressure in each situation,” Bell says.
“When I came to North Battleford, I was obviously being relied on to score a lot of goals and be an offensive guy, but the biggest tool that I had was honestly probably my teammates. They took a lot of the pressure off me. Looking back, yeah, there’s been pressures over the last few years, but I feel like the best way I handled it was just playing freely, not trying to be someone I’m not.”
Bell, now 22, is in the midst of his second season at Acadia University, who play in the Atlantic University Sport conference of USports.
It is widely considered the toughest men’s hockey conference in Canada.
Yet, when healthy, Bell has picked up right from where he left off in his monster SJHL career. Through 24 USports games, he has 20 career points and is off to a hot start this season, with five goals and nine points in six contests.
Bell credits the SJHL and the move to the Battlefords, where his extended family has all sorts of roots, for his ability to produce right away at the next level.
“Coming here, to be honest, I felt like I had no pressure,” he says.
“I was at the bottom of the depth chart last year, and I was just trying to play my game. Now the points are starting to come, and maybe once the points start to come, that’s when you begin to feel (pressure to produce consistently) a little bit.
“There are a lot of things (that helped prepare me for this level in the SJHL), but the main takeaway for me was just playing in that physical atmosphere with a bunch of smaller rinks, just adjusting to the physicality, that translates really well to AUS hockey. It’s a lot bigger, stronger, and it reminds me in a lot of ways of the SJHL. So that was very nice to get from the SJ to here — it made it a little bit of an easier transition.”
The fit at Acadia, located in the beautiful Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, was perfect for Bell because of the proximity of his immediate family.
But North Battleford was a perfect fit too, given his extended family hail from the area, and his uncle Martin Smith was already a club legend, having posted unearthly numbers between 1987 and 1992, to the tune of 382 points in 259 career SJHL games.
Between the SJHL regular season, playoffs, and the 2023 Centennial Cup, Kian scored a mind-boggling 116 goals and 243 points in 119 games, all for the Black and Silver of the North Stars.
In the off-season of 2024, the Stars decided to retire both Smith and Bell’s No. 27 jersey at the league’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in North Battleford that summer.
“It was super cool,” Bell says.
“I just remember sitting there — I thought it was just closing remarks — and then he sprung that upon us. I honestly went blank; it was really emotional. My uncle and I both didn’t know — he was sitting right across from me — and when they announced the number, we looked at each other. It was pretty emotional.
“It was just super honoured and I still am. It’s so cool to be able to have that with him forever. I’m just super grateful.”
It is not just through his uncle that Kian has the hockey gift, but also through his mother, Fiona Smith-Bell.
Smith-Bell, a defenceman, represented Canada at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and scored the 13th and final goal in Canada’s opening game pasting of the hosts.
Kian played U15 hockey in Saskatchewan before he moved back home to play in the Nova Scotia minor hockey system, and ultimately was drafted by and played for the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles of the QMJHL.
Yet even though North Battleford is literally thousands of kilometres from home, it did not take long for Kian to feel comfortable when he arrived in 2022.
“I mean, it feels like I grew up there (in the Battlefords),” Bell says.
“It was super special coming into a community that, for my family, was super well known. I’d been going there since I was a little kid to see my grandma, my uncle, and stuff. Everybody was super welcoming and brought me in with open arms. It just helped me grow up, honestly, being that far away from home.”
Bell is effusive in his praise for his coaches with the Stars, head coach Brayden Klimosko and assistant Garry Childerhose, and will forever remember the team that began a run of three-straight SJHL teams that made the Centennial Cup final.
Kian is flying in the beautiful world of the Annapolis Valley, but he fully understands that his success started here, in the land of his mother.
Find the full episode of SJHL Insider, with Kian’s full interview, below –
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