Five minutes into a conversation with a reporter last week, Northern Maine Pioneers owner Brandon Johnson’s phone rang.
“You’ll have to excuse me for a second,” he said, swinging open the door to a room attached to the lobby of The Forum in Presque Isle.
A minute later, in walked Jack Lowry, the head coach of the Pioneers, a junior hockey team in the Tier II National Collegiate Development Conference. He’d just arrived in Presque Isle for the first time. He quickly laced up his skates and joined the team for its second day of practice.
Halfway through the practice, the team’s jerseys arrived, delivered from Pakistan in about three weeks. The players themselves had only been in Presque Isle for two days. The next evening, on Oct. 3, they debuted as a team, beating the St. Stephen County Moose 4-2 on the road.
It’s been a whirlwind genesis for the Pioneers, who did not exist when the season began in early September.
Another NCDC team — the Presque Isle Frontiers — was supposed to play out of the city this season, but the league revoked the franchise from its ownership group after just three games amid serious roster issues.
The Pioneers were born out of that chaos, and have worked overtime since to introduce themselves to the community.
Players have volunteered at an apple crisp sale, helped out with Presque Isle Youth Hockey’s “Try Hockey for Free” event, hopped on a fall foliage chairlift ride at BigRock Mountain and met with City Manager Sonja Eyler.
And on Friday, they will become the first junior hockey team to ever play in Aroostook County.
“[The community] has just been fantastic,” Lowry said. “They’ve had open arms and I just want to get out there and thank them all, and hopefully we can win them over as fans”
So who are the Pioneers? And how will they fare in their inaugural season?
‘We’ve got a lot to prove’
The franchise made a number of trades, dealing draft picks and other assets, and picked up players in other ways to put together its 25-man roster in just three weeks.
The result is a group Lowry says is “determined and disciplined.”
The Pioneers are relatively inexperienced at this level of junior hockey. They have no players who have skated in more than a handful of NCDC games prior to this season. But that’s a reality many new teams are facing after significant offseason expansion pushed the league from 23 to 32 teams.
“We’re from all over. We’ve got a lot to prove,” said Ashton Adams, a right winger the Pioneers added from the Lewiston MAINEiacs. “Maybe the last team didn’t appreciate us as much as we’re appreciated here, so I think a lot of us are just excited to get going.”
The Pioneers features two sets of twin brothers. Grant and Kellen Matushak come to Northern Maine by way of the Blake School in Minnesota, where the forwards tallied 38 and 34 points respectively in a 26-game season.
Grant Matushak scored the Pioneers’ first-ever goal barely six minutes into the first period of the team’s debut against St. Stephen, assisted by Kellen. The latter scored the game-winning goal in the third period of that game, assisted by Grant. Both brothers finished the game with three points.
“They’re great teammates, but they’re also very smart hockey players,” Lowry said. “Their situational awareness on the ice is right up there at the top of the list with some of our other players.”
The team acquired Gabe and Owen Eckdahl from St. Stephen. Gabe, a forward, and Owen, a defenseman, only played three games for the Moose before suiting up against them with Northern Maine. There was no love lost — Owen Eckdahl was one of three Pioneers ejected for fighting in the game.
In net, Russian-born 19-year-old Murat Shiyanov is expected to be the team’s No. 1 goaltender. Shiyanov is one of three players the Pioneers acquired from the Connecticut Chiefs North, an NCDC franchise playing out of Biddeford this season that Johnson also owns and with whom they share a general manager.
Shiyanov originally came to the U.S. under contract with the North American Hockey League’s Northeast Generals, but joined the Chiefs for the start of this season, appearing in three games.
The netminder, who is a dual Swiss/Russian citizen, has played for various clubs in Switzerland since 2019. He’s represented Russia internationally on multiple occasions, including this May in the Liga Stavok Future Cup.
In the Pioneers win over St. Stephen on Oct. 3, Shiyanov stopped 45 of 47 shots.
“He’s consistent. He’s a hard working goaltender. His rebound control is fantastic,” Lowry said. “Right now, I would have to say that he’s separated himself.”
Among other in-state acquisitions are defensemen Jack Huyber and Jacob Heron, who the team also added from the MAINEiacs. Huyber scored a goal and assisted on another and Heron picked up an assist in the team’s opener.
“We’re more of a hard-nosed, blue-collar team,” Adams said. “We work hard in the corners, win every battle and just do the best we can offensively and let everything come together.”
Also on the Pioneers’ blue line is South Korean-born 20-year-old Heonwoo Ro, who made his NCDC debut with the New York Dynamo this season before being dealt to Northern Maine. He spent most of the last four seasons on teams at Somang Hockey, an international hockey academy in Quebec, and briefly played in the Danish second league last season.
The season ahead
Despite being a separate franchise, the games played by the Frontiers — Presque Isle’s short-lived first junior team — count for the Pioneers. So Northern Maine enters Friday’s home opener against the Woodstock Slammers with a 1-3 record, thanks to two seven-plus goal losses and a forfeit by the Frontiers.
But the New Brunswick-based Slammers, who are owned by the same group that previously owned the Frontiers, sit below them in the standings. Woodstock is 0-8-2 to start the season, last in the NCDC’s New England North Division.
The Pioneers will face the Slammers at 7:15 p.m. Friday in The Forum, then again on Saturday evening in Woodstock. They round out the weekend with a matinee in Gatineau, Quebec, against College Universal.
“If you want to see a fast physical game with some very talented young men … come to The Forum tomorrow night and you will not be disappointed,” Lowry said.
