Daylan Kuefler is a boy for all seasons, with one sport or another occupying his childhood year-round.
Kuefler, who just turned 12 last month, is the top scorer with the Stettler peewee A hockey team bound for the provincial championship this weekend in Red Deer.
“I’m just starting badminton this year, and I play basketball, soccer, spring hockey, and volleyball,” he said. “I try to play all our school sports, if it doesn’t interfere with hockey.
“Oh, and golf. I play golf, too. I golfed 80 or 90 rounds two years in a row now.”
Kuefler’s love of hockey is always in the forefront, whether he’s playing mini-sticks with friends in the basement, or winning a provincial championship on the ice, as he did last year as an under-ager with the Stettler Storm peewee A club, also known as the DQ Blizzards.
“That’s the one I want to excel at, as I get older,” he said of hockey. “Once I get a little bit older, I want to play, like, AA or AAA, or something like that, and then just try to excel at hockey.”
Kuefler, a five-foot-two, 100-pound centre, is already excelling at hockey. Playing against mostly older players, he was the second-best scorer in the North Central Minor Hockey Association this season, with 47 goals and 77 points in 22 games. He finished nine points behind league scoring champion Braden Streich, who had 56 goals and 86 points in 21 games with the Thunderstars.
Kuefler was also a scoring threat last season as the youngest player with the Stettler team that won the provincial title in dramatic fashion last March at Hinton.
He believes that this year’s Stettler team is a worthy opponent because the lineup is loaded with talented and hardworking players who thrive on optimism.
“I think we’ll do pretty good,” Kuefler said. “I think we have a chance of winning again this year, because we’ve got a really strong team. Last year (winning provincial gold) was a thing you’ll remember forever. It was really cool. To do it again would be even cooler. Winning provincials and playoffs would be crazy.”
Stettler faced a tough test in the best-of-three North Central league final against the Bentley Bruins. Kuefler scored two goals and set up another Monday night as host Stettler won 4-2 to take the series 2-1. That series gave Stettler a warmup of sorts for the provincial tournament, which begins Friday at Kinsmen Twin Arenas in Red Deer.
Even with his lofty statistics, Kuefler doesn’t take offence for granted, knowing that opponents are trying to thwart Stettler’s multiple scoring sources.
“It’s a challenge, for sure,” he said. “You’ve just got to keep fighting through it. It’s never easy.”
Stettler Minor Hockey Association president Jason Hegberg is in his second year as the peewee A head coach. His assistants — Neil Heck, Kyle Shingoose and Mike Kuefler (Daylan’s father) — all have sons on the team.
“They’re all really good coaches,” Daylan Kuefler said. “And Jason Hegberg doesn’t even have any kids on our team, so he puts a lot of time into it for us.
“He is the best coach I’ve ever had.”
Hegberg has major junior, Canadian university and minor-pro playing experience, so when he speaks, the kids listen. And the lessons aren’t all about hockey.
“He encourages us to be confident about the team and how the game is going,” Kuefler said.
“Just always have a positive attitude and it will take us a little bit farther.
“Off the ice, he said, ‘Don’t be like those kids that are running around the rink and doing all that stuff.’ Even in a different arena, like at tournaments, he said, ‘You’re representing Stettler, so you have to be good. Be nice people.’ ”
Kuefler’s hockey role models run the gamut from Danton Davis, a Sherwood Park midget AAA player formerly of Stettler, to NHL veteran Shane Doan, the Halkirk native who captains the Phoenix Coyotes.
Doan, who scored his 350th career NHL goal last Saturday as Phoenix beat the Calgary Flames 3-2, celebrated another milestone last week when he played in his 1,300th NHL game.
“My dad played hockey with (Doan) when they were younger, so I got to meet him a couple of times,” Kuefler said. “I thought that was really cool, too, so I was, like, ‘I want to be just like him.’ ”
It’s no coincidence that Doan is Kuefler’s favourite NHL player and the Coyotes are his favourite team.
“It’s kind of all about Phoenix,” said a smiling Kuefler, who has a giant Doan photograph decorating a wall in his basement.
Not far away is his mini-sticks central room, where his teammates often show up to play.
“You go through a lot of jeans,” he said.
When the weather turns favourable, road hockey becomes the order of the day. Teammates and friends are one and the same.
“Hockey is somewhere you can meet a whole bunch of friends, and it’s really a lot of fun,” Kuefler said.
“It was really cool (playing with older players). I have friends that are younger than me, and older than me, so I even got to meet older friends, too, and it was cool.”
Kuefler’s hockey-minded family includes his mother Sherri, the manager of the peewee A team, and sister Maddie, who plays with the Stettler bantam girls.
Kuefler is a Grade 6 student at Stettler Middle School. He wears an A as an assistant captain with the Stettler peewees. The captain is Rhett Shingoose and the other assistants are Alex DeYoung and Austin Jacobson.
In an exhibition game this season against Lacombe, Kuefler collected 11 points.
“I think I had five goals in that game,” he said.
Kuefler netted four goals in a playoff-opening victory over Blackfalds. He has nine goals and 12 points in five playoff games.
“It’s great to see a young guy have such a drive for the game,” Hegberg said.
“He loves having the puck on his stick. He loves to score goals. He’s got lots of skill.
“But just like anybody else, he has a lot of things that he’s got to work on. You know what he can do, so you’ve got to focus on the things that maybe he’s not doing well and try to push him harder to work on those things. But overall, he’s been a pleasure to coach over the last few years — same with everybody else.”
In the regular season, Shingoose finished fourth in league scoring, with 35 goals and 60 points in 22 games. Isaac Lee, Beau Cooper, DeYoung and Jackson Squires were among the Stettler players who finished in the top 15 in NCMHA scoring.
Along with many other Canadians, Kuefler woke up at 5 a.m. on Feb. 23 to watch Canada win Olympic gold at Sochi, Russia.
“It was pretty cool,” he said. “For early morning practices, (waking up is) not as bad, because I’ve got to get up and go play hockey. So it’s not as bad as when I have to wake up for school. Then, it’s like, argh.”