There are seven Osoyoos Coyotes from Terrace, B.C., making up a third of the team. Watching from the bench are (from left) Colin Bell, Connor Onstein, Sam Reinbolt and Hunter Johnson. Onstein, Reinbolt and Johnson have been playing on the same line for years, going back to minor hockey in Terrace. Other Terrace Coyotes are Carter Shannon, Brandon Onstein and Nick Nordstrom. Behind the bench are Head Coach Ken Law and Assistant Coach Brandon Watson. (Richard McGuire photo)

Many of the top Coyote hockey players were playing together long before they came to Osoyoos.

That’s because of a special hockey connection between Osoyoos and Terrace, B.C., which began five years ago when the Coyotes held a prospect camp in that isolated northern community.

Currently seven Coyotes are Terrace boys – a third of the team. Add to that Judd Repole, who leads the team in points and hails from Prince Rupert just down the road from Terrace.

Terrace boys Carter Shannon, Hunter Johnson, Colin Bell, Sam Reinbolt and Connor Onstein are five of the top seven Coyotes in point totals this season.

Rookie Brandon Onstein and defenceman Nick Nordstrom are also Terrace boys having an impact on the team.

“Very important,” is how Coyotes owner Randy Bedard describes the importance of Terrace players to the Coyotes.

The Coyotes, he said, held prospect camps in Terrace five and four years ago that established the connection. After that, word of mouth has led to a continuous flow of top hockey players from the city of just under 12,000 people.

“I think they’re hearing good things from the players who have played here,” said Bedard. “They’re going back home and we’re getting that next generation of player to play for us.”

Reinbolt, now in his second year with the Coyotes, has played on a line with Johnson and Connor Onstein both years in Osoyoos, but they also played on the same line in Terrace.

“We’ve had chemistry, me, Hunter and Connor,” said Reinbolt. “We’ve been on the same line for the last four years now.”

The only times the three didn’t play together were the years they were separated by age, he said. Johnson and Onstein are now 19, while Reinbolt is 18. Johnson began with the Coyotes three years ago, one year before the other two.

The prospect camps in Terrace first led to the recruitment of Colten Braid, who started with the Coyotes in the 2013-14 season. Ryan Roseboom and Repole followed, and in 2014-15, Bell joined the Coyotes.

“Word of mouth is your best recruiter,” said Ken Law, head coach and general manager of the Coyotes.

“It’s a bit of a domino effect,” said Rob Bell, Colin Bell’s father, who coaches the Terrace Kermodes midget rep team. “It’s more the kids’ word of mouth. Once a few kids get to Osoyoos, and they like the town and they like the program, the word spreads back that it’s a great place to go.”

Bedard and Law credit Rob Bell with tipping them off to promising players coming up through minor hockey in Terrace. But Bell modestly gives credit back to Bedard and Law.

“Ken has got an uncanny ability,” said Bell. “I don’t know where he sees guys play, but he seems to find guys and he knows where they’re at. He will phone me once in a while and ask my thoughts on certain guys, but for the most part he knows what’s going on.”

Hockey is a big deal in Terrace, which in 2009 was picked as Kraft Hockeyville, receiving 1.9 million votes from across Canada.

“We have a very strong minor hockey program in Terrace,” said Bell.

To be a competitive hockey player in Terrace requires commitment.

“Prince George would be the closest place that we would go to a tournament,” said Bell. “And that’s a seven- or eight-hour drive… We have our own highway coach that enables us to go to a lot of these tournaments… I could tell you the thousands and thousands of miles that I personally travelled – and a lot of those kids too – like my son (Colin) and Roseboom. We went everywhere.”

Being isolated has also meant that representatives of other Junior B teams rarely make it to Terrace to watch its players on the ice.

The closest Junior B team to Terrace is 100 Mile House, which is 895 kilometres and more than 10 hours away. A few Terrace players, including Nordstrom, have played there, but most have gone to Osoyoos.

“It’s a bunch of untapped resources up there in the sense of very good hockey players that are so far in the northwest they just don’t get seen a lot of the time,” said Bedard. “I know we’re referred to as Terrace South a little bit too.”

Colin Bell, now playing his fourth year with the Coyotes, is happy to be in Osoyoos, where he’s had great success.

“We all have good things to say about this place,” he said. “I think the community is super good to us. We get treated really good. It’s a nice quiet town. I really like it here… It’s a little smaller than Terrace, but it’s pretty similar. It kind of reminds me of Terrace.”

Reinbolt agrees.

“I love it,” he said of Osoyoos. “It’s a great town. The fans are very supportive. Everyone seems very invested in the team, lots of sponsors. Randy (Bedard) does a good job of bringing in all those sponsors.”

Reinbolt admits he was a bit nervous when he first came to Osoyoos at the start of the last season because it was his first time moving away from home. But having other Terrace players already here made leaving the family nest easier.

“I lived with Connor Onstein and we’re really good friends,” said Reinbolt. “We both kind of learned how to live away from home together, which made it easier.”

This year Connor Onstein is sharing a billet with his brother Brandon, who is playing with the Coyotes for his first season. Reinbolt is now sharing with Kaleb Comishin, from Nelson, B.C.

The two Onstein boys couldn’t be more different, even though they are both skilled hockey players.

“He’s a feisty little character,” Bedard said of Brandon, 17, who is just five-foot-nine and 155 pounds, but is super fast. “I think he’s a totally different personality.”

Brandon agrees that he and Connor are very different.

“He’s more like the nice guy,” he says of his brother. “I’m the guy in the penalty box usually.”

Brandon said he was inspired to come to Osoyoos after hearing good things about the town from Connor.

Brandon said his biggest surprise since joining the Coyotes was that he got a chance to play for a while on the team’s first line.

He’s also the team’s only player picked for the prospects game this year, coach Law pointed out.

Bedard says the Terrace players, like other Coyotes, are treated very well in Osoyoos and they often give back to the community, volunteering at events.

They get a chance to improve their hockey skills before moving to the next level in their hockey careers, whether it’s going on to Junior A or earning a scholarship to play hockey at a college or university.

“They’re laying the path for other players coming along,” Bedard said. “I really don’t see that pipeline to Terrace ending anytime soon.”

Colin Bell, now 20, said he might like to play hockey at a school next.

“Ken (Law) is good at finding schools that give us a few options,” he said.

He’s disappointed that in his four years with the Coyotes, the team hasn’t been able to carry its regular-season success through the playoffs.

“It would be nice to go all the way in my last year,” he said.

RICHARD McGUIRE

Osoyoos Times

Terrace boys Sam Reinbolt and Brandon Onstein keep up the pressure on Summerland in a recent game. (Richard McGuire file photo)