Maine hockey lands top Canadians

The University of Maine’s national championship hockey team has received verbal commitments from two players who had outstanding seasons for their respective teams in the Ontario Provincial Junior A league this past year.

Defenseman Mike Schutte Jr., the top scoring defenseman in the league and the defenseman of the year in the Western Conference, has verbally committed for this fall and forward Kyle Amyotte, the league’s regular season and playoff Most Valuable Player, will attend the school beginning in the fall of 2000.

Amyotte, 20, will play another year of junior hockey.

Both will be scholarship players.

Schutte notched 36 goals and 62 assists in 62 games, regular season and playoffs, for the Burlington Cougars while Amyotte had 114 regular-season points for the Bramalea Blues, including 54 goals, and added 55 more points in the playoffs.

Both players said Maine’s long history of success and the national championship were pivotal factors in their decisions to choose Maine over several other Division I schools.

“Obviously, they were national champions, so you can’t go wrong there,” said Schutte, who will turn 20 in July. “And Coach [Shawn] Walsh and [assistant] Grant Standbrook have a great history of sending players to the pros. It’s also a great school.”

The 5-foot-8, 175-pound Amyotte said, “I’ve heard a lot of great things about it. It has a great hockey program; it’s obviously the best program in the country. It also has what I’m looking for in a school.”

The 6-foot-2, 195-pound Schutte and Amyotte used to be teammates with Bramalea a couple of years ago and Schutte’s father, Mike Sr., was an assistant coach with Bramalea and the head coach with Burlington.

He said his son’s attributes include his “patience with the puck. He has a great panic threshold. He has good vision and good hockey sense. He knows when to make body contact and when to contain. He’s also got a good, hard, low shot.”

He called Amyotte a “tremendous player.”

“He’s a great playmaker and he finishes like a pro. He scores big goals,” said Mike Schutte Sr. “He has been the best forward in this league for four years. He’s also good defensively.”