Deep roots in Windsor and Essex County help Maroons secure Sutherland Cup title
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As the Chatham Maroons celebrate the team's second Sutherland Cup title in franchise history, a big chunk of that championship roster was built on talent from Windsor and Essex County.
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'Including myself, I think we had nine from Windsor and Essex County,' Maroons' head coach and general manager Richard Santos said. 'We've always had a pretty good reputation in Chatham for getting Windsor kids.'
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Santos got his coaching start in Tecumseh before moving up to the AAA system in Windsor with the Jr. Spitfires. He had been recruiting for the Maroons when he was offered the Chatham head coaching job in the summer of 2022 when former Windsor Spitfires' assistant coach Tyler Roeszler stepped aside as head coach and then dropped the GM title a few weeks later.
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'I didn't have any experience when I took over,' said the 36-year-old Santos, who boasts an 87-51-8-4 regular-season mark (.620 winning percentage) in three seasons. 'I give credit to the owners for sticking with me, but I think I've shown I can recruit and coach.'
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After a 4-5 start this season, the Maroons finished Western Conference play in the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League with 31-5-4-1 mark over the final 41 games.
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'Rich always said he had belief in this group and the core,' said Maroon's goalie Gannon Hunter, who is from Kingsville. 'We had the base for it.'
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He was quick to throw on his GM hat to make several moves at the January deadline to strengthen to Maroons, who faced a tough run just to reach the Sutherland Cup final after a redistribution of teams in the Western Conference after the GOJHL dropped from three to two conferences.
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'When we went to two different conference's, we knew our side was a little deeper and the grind we had to go to Sutherland Cup was probably the hardest,' Santos said. 'Elmira (a five-game series) was skilled, Stratford's a great defensive team (going seven games) and (top seeded) St. Mary's (another seven-game series) was No. 1 in the league.'
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The final with St. Catharines Falcons went six games before Chatham secured its first title since 1999.
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'I'm still taking it in,' the 17-year-old Hunter said. 'It's just surreal. I don't think at the start of the year, if you has asked anyone, that they would have had the Chatham Maroons winning the Sutherland Cup.'
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But it was Santos' eye for finding a player like Hunter that proved key to a title run. The Maroons went young with a pair of 2007-born goalies in Gannon and Samuel DiBlasi.
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