By 1:30 p.m. on the last Friday afternoon of April, there were no games left to play, no teammates around to talk to, not a sweater, not a stick, not even a roll of tape to be seen in the dressing room.
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Twenty-four Kingston Frontenacs had left the building after their exit interviews with management had wrapped up and they had cleared out any evidence that there’d been a team installed there since August.
The only one left was No. 25 on the interview schedule, Lukas Moore, a rookie defenceman from Courtice, Ont. While he waited to get called upstairs to the Frontenacs’ office, the gangly Moore sat at his stall out of habit, not by assignment — his nameplate like all others in the dressing room removed by maintenance staff.
The overagers and the 19-year-olds who had skated in their last Ontario Hockey League games were the first to sit down with coach Troy Mann and GM Kory Cooper. Those who’d be back at the end of the summer for training camp had to stick around for the feedback on their seasons, Moore the last among them.
“It does kinda suck to say goodbye to everybody here,” said Moore, who bears a striking resemblance to a young Ron Weasley. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in the room alone.”
When another rookie defenceman, Andre Mondoux, No. 24 on the list, had been called upstairs a few minutes before, team captain Quinton Burns had walked through the room. Burns had talked to Mann and Cooper on Thursday, but he had come back the next day to pick up his equipment, a bag with a St. Louis Blues logo, a souvenir of his time at their training camps the past two autumns. On his way out, Burns had a see-you-later and wave for Moore but no exchange of words beyond that.
Everything there was to say had already been said. That afternoon they’d be going in different directions, Burns north and east to his hometown in Smith Falls, Moore to Courtice due west. Unlikely they’d see each other anytime soon.
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After 220 games regular-season game with the Frontenacs and another 16 in two post-seasons, Burns was done his run in the OHL. He has an entry-level contract with the Blues and he’ll head to the club’s prospect-development camp after the coming draft and likely be playing for their AHL affiliate in Springfield next season.
This dynamic of ships passing in the night was apropos at this moment, given that in the last game of the Kingston season, that 6-4 loss in Game 7 to the Barrie Colts, Burns’s departure had opened up an opportunity for Moore to play that was wholly unexpected and urgently necessary.
With Kingston trailing 4-3 midway through the second period of that game in Barrie, Burns had chased defenceman Kashawn Aitcheson behind the Colts net with the teams playing four aside. Burns had rubbed out Aitcheson with a stiff hit that might have warranted a minor for holding, roughing or tripping, but probably would be a simple play-on in most jurisdictions. The refs that night whistled the play dead and after reviewing the video, handed Burns a major for slew-footing and a match penalty.
The loss of a blueliner relied on for 30 minutes a game was a crusher to his teammates holding out hope of advancing to the next round of the playoffs. For Moore, though, it was also cause for a gulp that dropped his Adam’s apple into his chest cavity, Rupert Grint’s signature move in Harry Potter’s times of crisis — the Frontenacs had been giving regular shifts to five defenceman and he had been an extra body, the sixth, on the bench. Thereafter Moore was going to be getting into Game 7.
“I didn’t get a shift in the second period with (Burns’s slew-footing major) to kill, but I got in for shifts in the third, mostly with Cal Uens,” Moore said.
When it was mentioned to him that his first shift in the third was alongside Emil Pieniniemi, Moore admitted that he hadn’t watched video of the game, and that blow-by-blow stuff was lost in the moment. “I’d played some in the season, but (in the playoffs) everything is just so intense and fast,” he said.
Moore also admitted that he hadn’t any expectation about the playoffs this spring other than having good seats for games and logging a lot of practice time skating with the black aces. That all changed when Kingston defenceman Maleek McGowan went down with a broken collarbone in Game 1 against Barrie when Kashawn Aitcheson levelled him with a devastating but clean check.
“When Maleek went down, I knew I was going to get into the lineup, but I didn’t think that I was coming in to take his spot or anything,” Moore said. “I knew the other guys were going to be asked to play more and maybe I’d get a shift.”
Moore was sparingly used in the series — very sparingly. He got in during garbage time in the Frontenacs 9-4 rout of the Colts in Game 4. He didn’t see the ice in overtime in the 2-1 loss in Game 5 in Barrie and sat in place in the brief extra frame in the 3-2 win in Game 6, the last Frontenacs action at Slush Puppie Place this season.
Only in Game 7, of all games, was be pressed into action with the season on the line, this two days after his 18th birthday.
““They told me throughout the year to be ready if anything that pops up and I did my best for the shifts that I had,” he said. “But I didn’t think I’d get into Game 7.”
He had a couple of nice moments — a well-timed pinch to keep the puck in the Colts’ end when Kingston was trying to claw back in the game, a smart read, not reckless but not fearful either. He had a nervous moment too — centre Cole Beaudoin came down on a one-on-one, what should have been a lock-up, but just bulled his way to the Frontenacs’ net and forced goaltender Charlie Schenkel to again bail out his teammates.
A fourth-round pick in the 2023 priority selection, Moore said he couldn’t assess his six playoff games and his 32 in the regular season in his first year in Kingston.
“I hadn’t played really since January and I had never played a playoff game as a junior before,” he said. “I was with the Lindsay Muskies in the OJHL last year and we weren’t very good. I didn’t even play with the Muskies after getting hurt in November. I didn’t get along with the coach. It was a bad fit.”
At that time, a staffer came into the room to tell Moore that his coach and GM were upstairs ready to talk to him. He had been in his stocking feet to walk around the dressing room, but went out to get his street shoes on.
A half hour later, Mann came down after he’d finished talking to Moore and was done for this the last day with the 2024-25 Frontenacs.
What had he told Moore?
“I told him he needs to take the positive out of the year,” the coach said. “He played a lot for us over a stretch in December when Maleek was hurt and Pieniniemi was at the world juniors. We didn’t really talk about the Barrie series. It’s tough to step in cold like he did and especially in Game 7 and on the road.”
Yeah, you could practically see Cole Beaudoin’s eyes light up in Game 7 when he realized who was trying to lock him up.
Moore might not be ready for self-assessment, but Mann put into the perspective the season of the last kid in line for his exit interview.
“I didn’t even know who he was at the start of training camp,” Mann said. “The way he laid it out to me, he virtually didn’t play at all last year. When we saw him at training camp we saw stuff that we liked, but we were wondering — why’s he doing a lot of these things one-handed? It turned out he had a wrist injury and didn’t tell anybody. He just wanted to make the team so bad he didn’t want to say anything to hurt his chances, which says a lot about the character and the want in him.”
If it’s any solace to him, Lukas Moore can certain that next spring he won’t be the last left in the building. Someone other kid will have to turn out the light.
gjoyce@postmedia.com
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