Every team in sports starts each season with a perfect record, and things go downhill from there. The rare exception in hockey circles these days is the Rayside Balfour Sabrecats, the shining star of the Northern Ontario Junior A Hockey Association.
The Sabrecats surely aged over the course of the year, but they defied at least one other fact of life -- the one that says you can't win 'em all -- by posting a glittering 40-0 record in the regular season.
And for skeptics who suggest that the six-team NOJHA isn't exactly the most competitive loop in Ontario Junior A hockey, the Sabrecats point to two wins over touring Russian and Swedish teams as proof that just because they're from a suburb of Sudbury, it doesn't mean their hockey isn't world class.
The Sabrecats are ranked as the top Junior A team in Canada by the Canadian Junior A Hockey League, the umbrella organization for the various provincial junior leagues across the country. If all goes well, they'll have a chance to defend their ranking at the Royal Bank Cup (formerly the Centennial Cup), the national Junior A championship, which will be held in May in Fort McMurray, Alta.
Their success has old-timers scratching their heads for comparisons. The old Sudbury Cubs had a perfect season a decade ago but never made it to the nationals, and other examples are few and far between.
"It's very unusual," said Ron Boileau, president of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League and past president of CJAHL. "It's so difficult to win game in and game out.
"There's been plenty of powerhouses, but they never seem to make it through a season undefeated, guys just don't show up every night. For them to hold it together is pretty amazing, no doubt."
Their success hasn't come out of nowhere. Since Gary Delorme, an engineer at an Inco steam plant, teamed up with Don McLean, a retired Sudbury fire chief, to buy the struggling franchise in 1996, the Sabrecats have won four consecutive league championships, made one trip to the national finals and lost only 18 regular-season games.
It's not so much that defeat doesn't rest lightly on their shoulders in Rayside-Balfour, it's just that it never happens enough for them to notice.
Still, no one was talking about a perfect season in training camp, just a good one. But then they won 5-4 in overtime against the Soo Thunderbirds in September and 4-3 in overtime over Sturgeon Falls in October, and next thing they knew, they were 12-0 heading into November.
"We only lost three games last year and three the year before that," said Ken MacKenzie, the Sabrecats' bench boss. "So our goals were pretty high anyway. But after we went 10, 12, 15 games [without losing] it was, like: 'Hey, there's a possibility here. We're not going for a perfect season, but we don't want to lose tonight.' "
And they never did. With a lineup anchored by a number of 20-year-olds in their final year of junior hockey, plenty of firepower (the top six scorers on the Sabrecats are the top six scorers in the league) and a commitment to defence (they had a shutout string more than six games long), things fell into place.
"A lot of strange things have happened," Delorme said. "I've got two goaltenders with a goals-against average of less than two. I've got a guy who scored three goals in 16 seconds. It's just been special."
As the regular season drew to a close, there was some extra pressure to keep the streak alive, but that was dealt with easily as well.
"We were a little anxious to get the season done with," said Serge Dube, a Sabrecats defenceman and co-captain of the team. "The pressure made us play harder, though."
Did it ever. Dating to late January, the Sabrecats' closest game was a 5-2 win over second-place Sturgeon Falls, a good team that went undefeated against other teams but lost all eight games to the Sabrecats.
Delorme says that the team's remarkable success is a product of determined recruiting and marketing.
About half of the team's roster come from outside the Sudbury area and get their room and board paid and help with tuition if they attend school.
But finding the players needed to win and the sponsors to foot the estimated $200,000 budget is a full-time job. Delorme says he will sell the team to a local buyer at the end of the season because the pace is too much.
Which makes this edition of the Sabrecats even more special. And while the perfect season has been nice, the real goal has been an appearance in the Royal Bank Cup.
"For a lot of us, this is our last kick at the can in junior hockey," said Dube, 20. "Anything else would be a disappointment."
An undefeated season is nice. But becoming the first team in the history of the NOJHA to win the national championship?
Now that would be perfect.