Augustana hockey player Mitch McMullin

by ACAC Sports Writer Curtis J. Phillips

Mitch McMullin's skates were literally pulled out from under him April 21, 2016, when it was announced that due to budget cuts, the Keyano Huskies men's hockey program would be discontinued at Keyano College.

"It was definitely a blow," recalls McMullin, 25. "I had two exams left to do when I heard the news. The team was pretty devastated as we did not see it coming. A few of us were lucky though to find homes (post-secondary schools) elsewhere."

McMullin, along with Huskies' teammates Owen Sobchak and Jimmy Sheehan, were able to latch on with the University of Alberta Augustana Vikings, heading south down Highway #63 to Camrose, Alberta.

"We got lucky and we got somewhere to continue and finish our degrees," said McMullin, who is enrolled in 4th year Business Economics, while Sheehan and Sobchak are both in 4th year Physical Education.

An education that may have not been possible for McMullin, had he not been playing shinny hockey?

"I had finished playing for Miramichi Timberwolves (Martine Hockey League, where from 2011-2014 he played in 133 games, recording 31 goals 40 assists) and went up to Fort Mac to start working," recalls the 5-foot-8 winger from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. "After playing shinny one day, I bumped into David Nippard and we started talking and we realized that we had some mutual friends. He (Nippard) was going to play for the Huskies that year (2014-2015) and he put me into contact with (Huskies) coach Nate Bedford."

Nippard, now with the SAIT Trojans, along with McMullin, would play key roles in leading the Fort McMurray Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) hockey team to a bronze medal in 2015-2016.

Bedford is now head coach of the ACAC Portage Voyageurs in Lac La Biche, Alberta.

"We (Keyano) had a good team, so it was sad," said McMullin of the team folding. "Growing up as a kid, my goal was to have hockey take me to university. Get a degree out of it and then help my parents out a bit with finances as they supported me the whole way up until I was 20."

Part of that growth, included leaving Nova Scotia at age 15 to attend Appleby College, an international independent school located in Oakville, Ontario.

"It was an experience for sure," recalls McMullin, of his time playing for the Greyhounds, formerly known as the Blue Dogs. "Being young and leaving home and having to make my own food and laundry sometimes. But most of all it was the people I met going away."

Noted for its athletics program, the school, founded in in 1911, includes among its noted alumni, actor Raymond Massey and John Marshall Harlan II a USA Supreme Court Justice.

McMullin said he started hockey at the age of five and loved the sport, "right off the hop" and credits his older brother Kyle as his role model.

"There was a story about my brother I didn't think of until now," said McMullin. "When I was little, I'd have to say around six or seven years-old, he would take me on the pond in our backyard with his friends. I would be trying to body check them and they were all falling when I did. I learned later that this was obviously a show they were putting on to get me excited about hockey, and it worked!"

Augustana is currently fifth place in the eight-team ACAC men's hockey conference with a record of 11 wins, 6 losses and 3 overtime losses with 80 goals for and 65 goals against.

McMullin in 20 games has 11 goals and 8 assists for 19 points. Former Husky's teammate Sobchak leads the Vikings with 3 goals and 21 assists.