GBH Alumni E-News

Off to Omaha

Posted on by Caprice St. Pierre
31
Jul

Lots going on as we head into the long weekend – so, grab a coffee or a cold one and enjoy today’s E-Newsletter on the beach, at the lake or in your back yard.

You’re going to want to dig into this one especially. That’s because we have a interview with Mike Gabinet who, aside from being Clare Drake’s grandson, is also the coach of the Omaha Mavericks, an NCAA Division One team from the University of Nebraska. Mike just recruited four of the top Bears skaters from last year – something that might not sit well with a number of our Alumni. So, we spoke to Mike, and also with Sean Tschigerl, one of the four Bears heading to Omaha, for their side of the story.

Mike Gabinet

And, spoiler alert – after reading what they had to say, there’s a good chance you’ll see that if any of us were in Mike’s or Sean’s shoes, no matter who our grandfather was, we’d likely do the same thing.

Also, these four Bears heading off to Omaha are not the only ones from last year’s squad to choose a path to the pro scene: Stan Marple let us know on Thursday that three more Bears also chose the NCAA route, making it seven in all. On top of that, two more Bears from last year decided to play professionally in Europe, along with three who graduated and also went to Europe.

So, Stan has 12 new players coming in this year – we’ll highlight them in an upcoming E-News edition. Mike Gabinet’s Omaha team has 15 new players. So it’s clear there’s likely been a lot of movement across the board in all the leagues this summer as a result of the new NCAA eligibility rules. We’ll find out more as camps for most of the U Sport and NCAA teams start in a week or two.

There are lessons in all of this for those of us who want to do whatever we can to help keep our Bears hockey program as strong as we can in an intensely competitive market for North American’s best student-athletes. Be sure to read this story further down.

Short Shifts:          

  • We need only two more orders for our Golden Bears Hockey Alumni melton-and-leather jackets to hit the 12 minimum. Place your orders here and let’s see if we can get this done over the long weekend. https://gbhalumnijackets.itemorder.com/shop/sale/. We’ll still be taking orders for the Stockholm parka and Stavenger thermal jacket as well until we hit the 12 melton-and-leather minimum. Any help you may need in placing an order, please call Alison at 780-454-9932.

As a testament to his influence on the expansion of women’s hockey and on people, another inductee that evening was Carla MacLeod (national team player; U Sport coach (MRU), international team coach – Japan and Chechia ) and she gave glowing reviews about the impact and effect of Howie on her development, both as a player and as a coach. In 2023 she was named the head coach for the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s Ottawa Charge.

In addition to his Hall of Fame induction, Howie is also the 2025 recipient of Hockey Canada’s Gordon Juckes Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of hockey in Canada at the national level. He becomes the fourth Golden Bears Hockey alumnus to receive this prestigious honour, following Dale Henwood in 1988, Clare Drake in 1999 and George Kingston in 2007.

Billy Ansell

Partner’s Profile – Tyler Hatch, Everyday People Financial

By Caprice St. Pierre

GBHA Feature Writer Caprice St. Pierre will be providing us with profiles of key members of our Partners’ Circle corporate sponsors. Today she writes about Tyler Hatch of Everyday People Financial, a $50K Partner for the 2025-26 season.

Everyday People Financial Corp., specializing in financial services, is joining the Golden Bears hockey team as a sponsor for the 2025-26 season.

Tyler Hatch, Co-CEO of Everyday People Financial, spent his first year of University competing for the Bears’ track and field team while training with the Bears’ football team. It was not a perfect fit, as does happen with some athletes, and Tyler ultimately decided to focus on his studies while working to ensure he graduated with no student debt. Commendable as that is, it does leave one question — he competed for the track team and trained with the football team, so why sponsor the hockey team?

Tyler Hatch

“We try to focus on in different avenues, and one is financial literacy there’s different ways to provide it to university students,” began Tyler, explaining that the company enters partnerships like this one with the Bears on the basis of personal relationships.

The Bears-Everyday People Financial relationship was concluded after Executive Chair Gord Reykdal and Co-CEO Barret Reykdal met with a group of GBHA members and learned more about the synergies between the two groups.

“Part of it necessarily, isn’t that it’s the hockey team per se, it might be a relationship and a foot in the door at the university that could potentially, down the road, lead to either work opportunities for people that we can hire out of university, or maybe there’s something we could benefit from by being in their personal life.”

Tyler highlighted Everyday People’s ability to employ younger workers due to the nature of the company’s work, making a partnership with one of the U of A’s most popular teams a mutually beneficial and possibly long-lasting relationship.

Everyday People focuses on a wide variety of financial services, but some include financial literacy, corporate expense cards, pseudo bank accounts, a new outlook on collection services termed revenue cycle management, and much more.

Tyler has been with the company for four years now but started his career the summer before his fourth year at the University of Alberta by doing door-to-door services in California. He went back the next summer and managed a team of workers. Post grad, he was hired by the same company and stayed there for 18 years, ultimately getting promoted to VP. During the end of his tenure there he began consulting in the finance industry on the side, which is the area he now works in.

He then took his funding model to Everyday People and presented it as a new area they could—and should—explore. The results spoke for themselves, and Tyler was promoted to COO and Co-CEO.

“It just started as, ‘I have an interesting funding model you guys should look at for the space I’m in.’ And they said, ‘You know what, let’s pick it up. Let’s do it.’ And then yeah, it kind of just changed the space I was in.”

Tyler Hatch is continuing to help Everyday People Financial grow – and now doing it in partnership with the Golden Bears.

Off to Omaha

Earlier this year, everyone who follows the Bears knew that the rule changes allowing U Sports and Canadian Hockey League juniors to play in the NCAA was going to mean some significant changes.

How significant it might be for the Bears really became evident on July 3rd when the Omaha Mavericks added 15 new players on their NCAA Division One squad, including four of the very best players who skated with the U of A Golden Bears last year. Here’s the announcement –  Hockey adds 15 newcomers to round out its 2025-26 roster – Omaha Athletics – and here are the profiles the Mavericks provided for the four Bears from last year.

  • #22 Aidan de la Gorgendiere, D, JR: de la Gorgendiere comes to Omaha following 50 games over the past two seasons with the University of Alberta (U Sports), where he tallied 55 points (12G-43A). The Langley, British Columbia native skated in 276 games with Saskatoon (WHL) over six seasons (2018-23) and had 173 points (25G-148A). He served as Saskatoon’s captain in his final two seasons with the Blades.
  • #71 Brett Hyland, F, SO: Hyland joins the new group of Maverick forwards after one season at the University of Alberta, where he totaled 37 points (16G-21A) in 27 games. The 2023 seventh round (200th overall) Washington Capitals (NHL) draft pick skated with Brandon (WHL), where in 205 games over five seasons, racked up 151 points (76G-75A) and served as a captain for two campaigns. This past season, Hyland was named to the U Sports (West) All-Rookie Team and Second All-Star Team.
  • #24 Marc Lajoie, D, SO: The Mavericks have added Lajoie to its pack of blueliners following one season with the University of Alberta, where he notched 26 points (5G-21A) in 34 games. Before the 2024-25 campaign, the St. Albert, Alberta native appeared in 292 games in the WHL with Tri-City (2018-23), where he served as captain during his final season, and with Edmonton (2023-24). In the WHL, Lajoie totaled 152 points (53G-99A). Lajoie was named to the WHL (Central) Second All-Star Team in 2023-24. In 2024-25, he was honored on the U Sports All-Rookie Team and the U Sports (West) All-Rookie Team.
  • #19 Sean Tschigerl, F, SO: Omaha adds Tschigerl, who led the University of Alberta in goals (22) and points (46) and tacked on the second-most helpers (24) in 32 games last season. The Whitecourt, Alberta native earned numerous honors in his sole season with the Golden Bears, was named to the U Sports All-Canadian First Team, All-Rookie-Team and won the league’s Clare Drake Award given to the Rookie of the Year. Prior to the 2024-25 campaign, Tschigerl played in 285 games between Calgary (2018-24) and Lethbridge (2024) of the WHL and recorded 217 points (98G-119A). Tschigerl was taken in the 2021 NHL Draft by the Anaheim Ducks in the fifth round (130th overall).

Ouch – that hurts.

And, as we said at the start, the fact that Omaha Coach Mike Gabinet is Clare Drake’s grandson was noticed by everyone. AND, Marc Lajoie is the son of GBHA member Serge Lajoie, who won four national championships as a Golden Bear player (1992), Assistant Coach (2006, 2008) and Head Coach (2018).

So, we reached out to Mike Gabinet, who kindly agreed to chat and give us his perspective. Here are some short notes from our 30-minute conversation that took place on Monday:

  • Mike made it clear that the four players that came to Omaha were clearly intent on playing in the NCAA.

“This was not an Omaha vs. U of A decision. This was U Sports vs. NCAA – if these guys didn’t come here, they were going elsewhere in the NCAA. Their representatives made it clear to us. So, yes,  there is an  internal battle for me knowing we’re taking them from the U of A. And especially since I hold U Sports and the U of A in such high esteem. I really do – but when it became evident that they wanted to go to the NCAA, we did everything we could to make sure they came to Omaha.”

  • He also understands how some people may feel about him recruiting from a program that Coach Drake, his grandfather, helped build:

“I can understand people being upset, and that’s a little tough on me. Yet, If you put yourself in my shoes, I don’t think it would look very good if these players chose the NCAA and they went somewhere else. We know these four players, we’ve been in touch with them since they were 15, we know where they’ve come from, so if we couldn’t attract them, there would be questions raised about our program. Over time things will settle down and people will understand my position. I certainly hope they do.”

  • What he saw in the Golden Bear players and how they fit on his team this year:
    “We know their daily habits and work ethic. Good guys know good guys, and these guys all are good guys. We obviously talk to people who know them, strength coaches, staff and others, and you know they practice hard, work hard and look after themselves. These are the kinds of players we’re looking for to help us in what is a really, really tough conference (National Collegiate Hockey Conference). Six of the last eight national champions come from the NCHC. We’ve got some really tough teams to play against – Denver, North Dakota, Arizona State and others. Six people from our coaching staff in the past three years have made their NHL debuts as coaches in some capacity, so that shows you the level we’re at.”
  • His view on the long-term impact of the NCAA eligibility rules :
    “Change is constant and it really has been for the past five years for me. First we had COVID, then the 5th year eligibility, then the transfer portal, and now the CHL rule changes. This now means there are 1,500 new players eligible to play in the NCAA and 98% of them are Canadians. So I think over time you’ll see the CHL get younger and possibly see that happen in U Sports as well. I really think that we’ll see what happens this year and be able to have a better idea.”

Sean Tschigerl

Following our call with Mike on Monday, we then reached out to Sean Tschigerl for his thoughts on the move to Omaha. We had a call with him on Tuesday of this week. If anything, Sean left absolutely no doubt that he and his three Bears teammates wanted to go to the NCAA. Here’s why:

  • The goal is to play pro. “I want to play pro, and all four of us who went there want to play pro. We totally loved our time at the U of A and the Bears. The program is an amazing one, but if we want to play in the NHL, AHL or any other pro league, our chances of getting there are way better if we go to the NCAA. Every game we play at Omaha there will be ten to twelve scouts pro scouts in the stands. We just don’t get that visibility in U Sports. Plain and simple as that. “
  • The Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules in the US allow NCAA student athletes to earn money from endorsements, social media and other branding activities without losing their amateur status. Sean says this really wasn’t a factor for the four Bears: “I know you hear a lot about the NIL but quite honestly, the guys at the very top will obviously be able to take advantage of that but for most of us, it’s simply not a factor.”

So there you go. If you’re Mike Gabinet and you have a chance to make your team better by recruiting top skaters from the Bears who are intent on going to the NCAA, of course you make the effort to get them. You wouldn’t be doing your job. If you are in the Omaha Athletics Department or an Alumni, you expect nothing less from him. And if you’re a top U Sports player like Sean Tschigerl doing everything you can to play pro and you have a chance to play somewhere where you think that improves your shot at getting there, of course you’re going to go.

And, as we mentioned at the start, they are not alone: three other Bears from last year also chose the NCAA route and two more went pro in Europe. Three others graduated and moved on to play pro elsewhere, taking the total to twelve. Here’s a quick summary of those moves as sent to us by Stan Marple:

  • Elias Carmichael, a top six Defensemen last year, has a Slovakian passport and signed with Nitra in the Slovakian Extra League.
  • Jakin Smallwood has a German passport and signed with ERC Ingplstadt in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga.
  • Tyler Palmer – Canada West Rookie of the year goaltender signed in NCAA with Bowling Green University
  • Ty Nash – Signed NCAA div 1 with ASU – Arizona State University – Ty is also American and resided in Tempe in the off season.
  • Connor McClennon – Signed NCAA div 1 with Bemidji State University – Connor was our top scorer in the play-offs last year.
  • Josh Prokop – Team captain last year.  B Comm graduate at the U of A  – Signed a PTO with Bakersfield at the end of the year and signed a pro contract with Herring Blue Fox in Denmark  for the 2025 / 26 season.
  • Eric Florchuk – Assistant captain last year. B Comm graduate at the U of A – Signed in pro contract in Austrian League with Vorarlberg Pioneers.
  • Tyler Preziuzo – Graduated from Kinesiology, Sport and Recreation at the U of A – signed a pro contract with Guildford Flames UK Elite League .

So, we maybe have some lessons to learn from this, with implications for our Alumni group. We’ll have some thoughts on this for you soon, and some ways we can all work together to support the Bears so we can do whatever we can to attract and retain the top talent to our program.

Stay tuned. And in the meantime, let’s thank all 12 departing Bears for their contribution to the program, and wish them best of luck this year. Their success will in some ways be a reflection on our program as well.

Thank you so very much to everyone reading this E-News for your interest and support. Please pass along to anyone else who you think would like to ready our newsletter.

Rick Peterson

Vice President

Golden Bears Hockey Alumni

Caprice St. Pierre

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