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Marc Stevens tries to make most of a trying OHL season

Marc Stevens tries to make most of a trying OHL season

Marc Stevens was far from a shining star two years ago, but he did get to appear under one of junior hockey’s biggest and brightest spotlights.

A depth forward with the Guelph Storm, Stevens was part of the team that won the OHL title and reached the Memorial Cup final in London, Ont. The only time he suited up in the Memorial Cup tournament came in the championship game, which his Storm ultimately lost to the Edmonton Oil Kings.

It was a season he’ll never forget even though it now feels like a distant memory. Especially when asked about it during a season he’d like to forget..

“With this year it’s been a bit of a different story than we were hoping,” Stevens said. “But we’re still battling and working. Staying positive and realizing there’s always tomorrow and there’s always another game.”

Stevens represents a fairly rare breed in the cyclical nature of major junior hockey – a younger player on a Memorial Cup-bound team who winds up guiding the same organization through a rebuilding period during his veteran years.

Now in his third full season with the Storm, Stevens has experienced the highest of highs to the lowest of lows as far as the OHL standings go.

From league champs in 2013-14, the Storm have been the OHL’s worst team by record (11-33-4-2) all season. They’ve been much better lately, winning five of their last 12 games – including a 3-0 decision over the high-flying London Knights last month. Guelph is closing in on the Oshawa Generals – last year’s Memorial Cup champion - and the Flint Firebirds in an effort to get out of the basement.

For Stevens, who has been limited to 18 games due to injury, he’s been left to look for silver linings.

“You think back to the reason why you started playing the game of hockey. It’s for the fun of the game, the love of the game,” said the 19-year-old centre from Turkey Point, Ont., on the shores of Lake Erie. “At the start of the year, it wasn’t looking good. There was only one way to go and that was up.”

Stevens and defenceman Garrett McFadden – both now alternate captains – are the only two members left from a veteran-laden 2013-14 squad that beat the North Bay Battalion in the OHL final.

Last season, the Storm were able to reach the playoffs and defeated the Owen Sound Attack before bowing out to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.

This season, without Canadian world junior winger Robby Fabbri, who made the St. Louis Blues out of training camp Guelph lost 14 of its first 15 games. Bill Stewart resigned as coach in December and was replaced by Jarrod Skalde. Overage goaltender Justin Nichols, who started for the championship squad two years prior, was traded before the deadline to Oshawa.

“We were a really young team and we struggled a lot in the first half of the year. I really would like to say I took it upon myself to be a leader and try to motivate the young guys,” Nichols said. “When you’re on a poor team, especially as an older guy, you have to be consistent on a nightly basis and give the guys a bit of confidence so they know if they’re going to make a mistake you’re going to be solid in there.”

As the losses kept piling up, Nichols started to look at the bigger picture. He wanted to be a positive role model to the younger Storm players, whether it was in the dressing room or away from the rink.

“I take a lot of pride in the person that I am with my teammates, the fans and the community,” he said. “I knew what I was walking into this season.”

That is a mindset with which Brett Stovin is quite familiar.

Stovin was a third-liner on the 2012-13 Saskatoon Blades, which hosted the Memorial Cup. The Blades endured a terrible start to that season – only reaching the .500 mark in December – and needed a franchise-record 18-game winning streak to win their division. However, they were swept in the first round of the playoffs and lost the tiebreaker game in the Memorial Cup.

That team featured 16 players 19 or older. Massive roster turnover ensued. Because 13 trades were made from the offseason to the 2013 WHL trade deadline – not to mention the blockbuster deal to acquire Brayden Schenn in 2011 – the cupboard was mostly bereft of prospects and picks.

So unlike the Storm, the Blades started losing right away.

“We knew what we were in for,” said Stovin, now a point-per-game centre with the University of Manitoba Bisons. “We knew the pressure we’d have on us was a different type. We weren’t expected to win every game, but we knew we were expected to take in the young guys and show them the ways of the league.”

The Blades finished third-last in the WHL that season.

By the 2014-15 deadline, Stovin was one of only three players from that Memorial Cup team remaining. The Blades dropped to last in the standings.

“It’s tough to think about,” Stovin said. “The last 30 games of the season when you know you’re out of it is when you take your personal goals and you try and reach those. But you still are vocal in the dressing room. You’re still trying to prepare the younger guys.”

“I turned my attention to guys I knew were going to be leaders,” he added. “I had leadership talks with them even if I was just driving with them to the rink.”

Stevens believes there’s something to that. He said he’s trying to be a leader in an otherwise difficult situation.

Having watched players like Matt Finn and Ryan Horvat two years ago, Stevens wants to mentor others like they did for him.

It’s really all he can do as the season winds down.

“We’re working every day and trying to get better day by day,” Stevens said.

“That’s pretty much all it is right now. ”