Haliburton County Huskies head coach and general manager Ryan Ramsay said he was “frustrated” by the four-to-one series loss to the Trenton Golden Hawks – that ended the team’s best-ever season in Ontario Junior Hockey League (OJHL) action.
Trenton took the Huskies out on their home ice, 4-2, April 13 to end the eastern conference finals.
“Frustrated … happy it was a good season, but that was winnable,” Ramsay said.
He felt most of his squad showed up for the finals, but not all, and “if we had all showed up, we would have won.”
For example, Deandres De Jesus led the Huskies with 30 regular season goals, but was blanked in all 17 playoff games. “Just look at the production from some of your go-to guys with points,” the coach added.
Ramsay felt the Golden Hawks were vulnerable to his Huskies team going in.
“It was literally right there. You look at the games, you’re overtime 2-1, double overtime 3-2, like they’re all one goal games, you take out the empty net ones. The last game at home, we hit three crossbars. We score on at least one of those, it’s a 3-2 game for us and the pressure is on them. You have to have good goaltending to win. We had good goaltending.”
On April 13, the Huskies were in it, tied 2-2 until 16:55 of the third period, on goals by Declan Bowmaster and Ty Petrou. But Isaiah Shantz broke their hearts. Trenton followed up with an empty netter.
On April 12, it was the same scoreline. It was another 2-2 game (Nathan Poole and Isaac Larmand scoring) before Trenton scored in the second to take the lead and finished it off with a late, third period goal.
The Huskies recorded their only win of the series April 10 in a thrilling 4-3 double overtime victory after Chase Lefebre scored with just 11 seconds left in regulation time; his second of the game. Kieran Litterick was the overtime hero.
On April 14, the players were busy cleaning out their lockers at the A.J. LaRue Arena in Haliburton. With their home arena being converted to a warming centre in the aftermath of the ice storm, the Huskies had to move their home games to Haliburton.
The coach said the ice storm, and being relocated, created “lots of adversity” for his young team.
Ramsay acknowledged his players were “disappointed” in the result as well. “They knew that team was beatable. Fast forward to today (April 14) and we would have had home ice advantage in the finals.”
While the loss still stings, Ramsay reflected on a 2024-2025 season that saw his club go further in the playoffs than it ever has.
He added, “this is the most wins in Whitby Fury-Huskies history. We were happy throughout the whole season; 40 wins, we’ve never reached that before. Tons of positives. We have four guys with Division 1 scholarships, 11 or 12 that played in the OHL. We’re really one of the league’s top franchises.”
And the work does not stop. Rookie camp looms. And Ramsay reverts back more to his general manager role, figuring out what the 2025-2026 Huskies will look like with departing 20-year-olds and others.
“You get mentally tired but I love it. If I didn’t love it, we wouldn’t be doing it.”
