It took seven games but the Lac du Bonnet Blues finally recorded their first ever Carillon Senior Hockey League win.

Ryan Lussier scored in the 13th round of the shootout to lift the Blues past the Red River Wild 8-7 last Sunday in Lac du Bonnet.

"It was a great feeling," said Blues manager Jay Zarecki. "It took us quite a few games to get going. There was a lot of excitement. For the old Blues that were there it was pretty exciting."

Lac du Bonnet's inaugural season season in the CSHL got off to a rocky start.

The Blues dropped their first six games and were outscored 58-10.

Then win number one arrived.

"We've got a good mix with some young guys that skate hard and lately we've added a few veterans that will calm the guys down and get them going in the right spots," said Zarecki, "It was good to see the guys gel together in this game. It was real nice."

Lac du Bonnet's own Brent Wold, who had 20 goals and 33 assists in 42 games and helped the Eastman Selects reach the Manitoba AAA Midget Hockey League final in 2009-2010, leads the Blues with four goals and nine points in seven games.

Lac du Bonnet won the Manitoba Senior Hockey League championship and lost out the Tiger Hills Hockey League champion Killarney Shamrocks in the Provincial Senior "A" final in the spring of 2016.

That summer the Blues found out they had nowhere to play as the MSHL took a leave of absence.

"For me the big part was for the community and the surrounding communities to have senior hockey again," Zarecki said. "We had a young group of kids that wanted to try and put something together and contend, so here we are."

Unfortunately Lac du Bonnet joined the Carillon Senior Hockey League the year the Steinbach Huskies, La Broquerie Habs and Springfield 98’s took a one-year leave of absence which meant a number of players from those teams joined up with the Grunthal Red Wings, Red River Wild and defending champion Ste. Anne Aces.

"With Ste. Anne and Red River getting to the finals last year and then they tuneup up their teams with the folding of other teams - it was tough," said Zarecki. "We knew it was going to be tough going in. We've been slowly adjusting the roster and finding the right mix of veteran guys and young guys. It just worked out that Sunday and hopefully things continue going well moving forward."

The Blues had one major issue to deal with when they applied for join the CSHL.

The closest team was one hour away and that was Ste. Anne.

It would take a couple of hours to get from Lac du Bonnet to St. Jean to play the Wild.

"Red River has got the same travel when they come here and they were all for it from the start and I thank them for that because that was the biggest concern was their travel too," said Zarecki. "Our guys were all on board right from the start and they knew that there was going to be a lot more travelling in this league."

The travelling continues this weekend as the Blues will play a pair of road games against Grunthal and St. Malo.