If nothing else, the Calgary Hitmen are the model of consistency in the inconsistent world of junior hockey.
As much as things are different they remain the same for the Calgary Hitmen.
The playing fields are re-leveled after each season in the Canadian Hockey League, where building a core and maintaining a winning tradition is a tall order. In a span of one summer, a veteran-laden team can quickly become a rebuilder.
Some predicted the Hitmen, who made several trades to make their run which fell two wins short of a Western Hockey League championship last season, might realize the inevitable reality of junior hockey's cyclical nature.
The team was ravaged by junior graduation this summer, forced to hire a new head coach when Dave Lowry became an assistant with the Calgary Flames, and yet the results hardly changed this season.
If nothing else, the Hitmen are the model of consistency in the inconsistent world of junior hockey.
The Hitmen finished no worse than fourth in the Eastern Conference the last four seasons, including a league-high 122 points last season. Although just one league championship banner hangs in the rafters of the Pengrowth Saddledome, that of the 1998-99 season, few teams have the ability to remain contenders on a yearly basis.
"I think it's a great organization to play with," veteran forward Brandon Kozun said. "Year in, year out they're good and that shows a lot about management and it's definitely a huge honour to play for this team."
It would have been easy for the Hitmen to make excuses, had the team gotten off to a slow start. In addition to phasing in nine new players, a new voice from the bench in head coach Mike Williamson, and the departure of elite-level junior players would have made it understandable.
Such is not the way of the Hitmen, as their new coach discovered.
"The biggest thing I noticed coming in is the expectations are high," Williamson said. "They don't allow people to use (junior graduation) as excuses. They expect excellence and the players have a belief and expectation to win and that's a great thing to have when you walk into a room.
"There's a winning culture here."
Williamson joined the Hitmen after spending two seasons away from hockey. His résumé is extensive, as both a player and coach of the Portland Winterhawks. Williamson spent 15 seasons with the Winterhawks franchise, including winning a Memorial Cup title in 1998 as an assistant coach.
While the Winterhawks boast a proud tradition, the pressure involved with coaching in one of Canada's biggest markets was an adjustment.
"(The pressure has) been a little bit more external here and in your face with the papers and what not but that's something you have to learn to deal with at any level," he said. "You have to have that pressure to be successful."
And the Hitmen have been successful.
Calgary started their season with three-consecutive road games against divisional-opponents, winning each of them. Those three wins helped set the foundation for the season, as the Hitmen sit atop the Eastern Conference leader-board with a 10-3 record heading into Friday's action.
"Any time you can beat a team in your division it's going to help you and those are four-point games," Kozun said. "It definitely helps to start your season off against teams in your own division."
Kozun is one of the remaining players from last year's team, using the bitter experience of last year's loss to the Kelowna Rockets as motivation this season. As one of the veterans, Kozun took on a leadership role this season and is tied for the league-lead in scoring with 23 points through the first 13 games.
"Kozy's a competitor," Williamson said. "He's hungry at the net, he'll go to the net, he'll go to the tough places and he's a guy that we need to be at the top of his game all the time."
The 19-year-old Kozun broke out last season, scoring 108 points in 72 games. For Kozun, the transition between coaches has been seamless, much like the team's success from one season to the next.
Although the results have been positive through the first month, Williamson notes there's still room for improvement. The team's ability to win playing different styles with different players stepping up on a nightly basis has been encouraging but remains a work in progress.
"It's not going to be one or two guys that carries our team each game, it's going to be a team game," Kozun said.
The mentality, like the winning culture, is to prove their critics wrong. In spite of the major overhaul of their roster, the team still has a lot left to prove.
"I think you get (criticism) every year and we got that a lot last year," Kozun said. "There's going to be doubters that come every year but you have to prove everyone wrong."
By upstaging their critics, the Hitmen stay the course in proving their consistency in an otherwise inconsistent world.
