Sting to honour 1988 Mooretown Flags

By DAVE BORODY
Mark Davis remembers like it was yesterday.
Back in 1988 at 26 years of age, Davis was given his first junior coaching assignment, that being the Mooretown Flags Junior C Hockey Club.
Little did he know that nine months later his team would win their first and only Ontario Hockey Association Junior C championship.
The Flags will be honoured prior to Saturday’s Ontario Hockey League game between the Sarnia Sting and Windsor Spitfires at the RBC Centre.
Game time is 7:35 p.m.
I keep telling people the reason we won because we got along so well,” said Davis during an interview this week. It was a family-like atmosphere. Everyone worked and played hard. I remember our first 10 games of the season we had an awful record and there were some who thought we weren’t even going to make the playoffs. But we turned it around, got better as the regular season went along and then had a great playoff run.”
Davis said the playoff run was magical.
We had three rounds to win the league title. We beat Dresden, Leamington and Petrolia. All three of hose teams had beaten us during the regular season. Petrolia finished first while it seemed we lost big the times we played Leamington.
The finals were against Petrolia and we won the series in seven games winning the last game at the Petrolia Arena. The place was jammed. Dave Oldale scored the winning goal. He didn’t even see the puck go in as a shot by someone else hit his stick.”
The Flags advanced to the provincial play downs where they knocked off Stoney Creek, Orangeville and won the Ontario title taking out Port Perry in five games in the best of seven finals.
That series with Port Perry was unbelievable. They came to our barn first and we almost had a brawl in one of those games. George Burnett was their coach. (Burnett is now coach and general manager of the Belleville Bulls).
We went up to their rink and won the first game there. They seemed to be getting better as the series went along so we wanted to win the next game and end it and not have them come back to Mooretown. We won the deciding game 3-2 and it was so exciting.”
Davis has gone on to coach several teams in junior C and junior B. He is currently coaching the Wallaceburg Lakers junior C team where they are in a dogfight with Belle River and Essex for first place overall.
But that team in Mooretown in 1988 had so much character. The players loved the game and would so whatever it took to win. Win or lose we didn’t panic. There’s no question we peaked at the right time in the playoffs.”
Steve DeGurse was Davis’ assistant coach while Bob Haley was the manager. Team support staff included Brian Stack, Don Rutter, Brent Devries and Ken Adams.
The team included Jeff Perry, who later played in the OHL with Owen Sound and then in the NHL with Calgary and Toronto. Perry then got into coaching and was the head coach of the Sting for a couple of years. He is now head coach of the Sarnia Legionnaires junior B team.
Other team members included Kerry Adams, Brad Allen, Mike Caley, Mark Cornelious, Ted Dupont, Tom Foster, Tyler Fraleigh, Dan Gardner, John Germain, Shawn Jackson, Shane Green, Craig Lindsay, Cory Pageau, Seth Lippiatt, Dave Martin, Brian McCabe, Lee McCabe, Shawn Muscutt, Dave Oldale, Ken Nicholson, Rob Purdy, Darren Thompson, Bob Waybrant and Ken Williams.
Pageau also went on to play in the OHL.
The unique thing about this team was we didn’t make a lot of changes as the season went along. We only added Rob Purdy and Shawn Jackson at the trade deadline. The rest of the team remained intact. They were just a great bunch of guys who all came from Lambton County with a common goal to win a championship,” Davis said.
STING NOTES
– The Sting will also be honoring five Windsor Spitfire players who competed at the recent World Junior Tournament in Saskatoon. They include Cam Fowler from the gold medal United States team and four members of the Team Canada, Taylor Hall, Ryan Ellis, Adam Henrique and Greg Nemisz.
The team will also honor one of their own, forward Brett Ritchie who helped Team Ontario win a gold medal at the World Under-17 Tournament in Timmins. Team Ontario lost 2-1 to Team USA in the final game. Ritchie had two goals and two assists in the tourney.
When Ritchie re-joined the Sting Wednesday night, he had a goal and an assist in a 5-4-overtime loss to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. Ritchie was named second star.
– Tickets for Saturday’s game with Windsor are on sale daily at the RBC Centre box office or by calling 519-541-1717.


Dave Borody is a freelance writer who covers Sting games home and away, and also does features for the Sting Website.