Nov 11, 2017 | Ryan Stewart | 514 views
Mitchell PeeWee Tournament (Updated)
Our first tournament of the season was held just a short 1 hr drive north in the towns of Mitchell and Moncton. Thankfully the weather held off and the potential lake effect snow didn't put a damper on our travel plans. We had all the Goldiggers attending this weekend except Matt aka "Hoefy" who was away with his family attending prior commitments this weekend so Ben has the assignment between the pipes for the tournament. Things started off great with the kids ending their school day a bit early, it seemed like a goldigger convention in the office at Parkview P.S at lunchtime with a number of parents picking up their players at the same time......
Game 1 was scheduled at the Elma-Logan Arena in Moncton at about 3:00pm against the home favorites, the Mitchell Meteorites. The game started off quite slow, I think bus legs contributed to our sluggish start. The good news is we were first to score with 2:16 on the clock in the first period, Ethan Bond buried a hard shot assisted by Will Stewart. The 2nd period started and we were slowly playing better and getting our legs under us. Our defense were doing a very good job shutting down the offensive threats and contributed big time on the points count today. Our 2nd goal of the game was a beauty, Ethan Bond passed the puck back to AJ Duffy on the point and AJ blasted a hard high shot at the net from the point. The "Loganator" Logan Doxtator tipped the shot past the goalie for our 2nd goal of the game with 6:52 on the clock in the 2nd. AJ was no doubt pumped about Logans nice goal and fired a beautiful shot from the point only 15 seconds later for our 3rd of the game unassisted at the 6:36 mark . We weren't done yet, on the next play Michael was not about to be out done as he flew into the offensive zone, cut to the net and scored our 4th goal of the game unassisted just 38 seconds after his brother. The 3rd period was a bit less hectic as Mitchell was trying hard to answer back. The time ticked down a bit with a few penalties we don't want to mention, especially the bogus "too many men" call :-(. Enough said about that, our final goal of the game came at the 4:22 mark when the "Loganator" scored assisted by Ethan Bond and Liam Peters Albert. Great job guys, your line has lit it up this game, great work! Time was ticking and we had a brief fooopaw when our opponent managed to score with 1:37 left and foil Ben's shutout hopes. This game ends with a 5-1 victory for the good guys.
Game 2 was scheduled at the Mitchell Arena about 15 minutes south of Moncton this morning at 10:00. Our foe was a good team called New Hamburg Huskies. It's hard to predict how games will go at this age, especially when we have never played these guys. We needed to come out strong and play hard and hope for the best. Spencer Whitney suggested we use red tape on our sticks in order to honor the Veterans on Remembrance Day, what a great idea Spencer and thanks to Ethan Bond for offering your rolls of red Canada tape! The team jumped at this and everyone was sporting red tape on their sticks for this game. As far as the actual game goes, unfortunately, we just couldn't get anything going offensively and the opponent was out playing us at almost every step. They were winning the battles and coming out with the puck at every turn. As the game progressed the goals started to add up. The game ended with a 5-0 loss. I'll give credit to the Huskies defense, they managed to shut down our offense and keep us off the board for the first time this year. We spoke about the loss in the dressing room after the game. It was now time to pick ourselves up, dust off and prepare for game 3 this afternoon at 3:00pm.
The 3rd game was against an opponent called Blyth-Brussels Crusaders. They are also playing their 3rd contest of the tournament and the winner of this game will advance to the semi-final on Sunday morning. We came out playing much harder in this game and we seemed to be taking the play to our opponent. I purchased a jar of pickled eggs at the fundraising sale and told the kids they were rotten eggs after they wouldn't believe me when I said they were dinosaur eggs. I told them they would each have to eat a rotten egg if we lost the game. If they won I would eat 1, if Ben got a shutout 1 would eat a 2nd. The kids were working really hard but for some reason we just couldn't get the puck in the net. We kept banging away but no dice, there was always a leg in the way or the puck would go wide and the opposition goalie was doing a good job stopping the shots that got through. Ben was playing well at our end and no scoring happened until the 3rd period when a hard slap shot from the point found the back of our net through traffic to put us down by 1 with 5:53 left to play. The Golddiggers were working really hard but no dice, we just could come up with the equalizer. Coach Ryan called Ben to the bench for the extra attacker, it was a bit of a nail-biter as Ben has to scramble back as the opponent caught us, luckily they shot wide and the deficit was still at 1. We tried real hard but it wasn't meant to be as the Blyth team scored an empty netter to finish the game. Coach Ryan said it best in the dressing room after the game when he said "we didn't get any bounces going our way and the better team didn't win this game today". I think all the other coaches would agree with this and one thing is certain, the hockey gods decided it wasn't our turn this time. That is the way it goes sometimes. We can't realistically expect to win every game although it would be nice :-). As a competitor we all want to win, good competitors always do. Suffering a few losses every now and again is inevitable and just another learning experience in the great game of hockey. Remember, good competitors lose lots of games and it is very important to hold your head high in defeat. Be proud of our efforts, learn from it and come back strong!
In closing we want to wish our friendly foes, the MB Cougars Blue team good luck on Sunday. GO COUGARS GO!
Breaking News Update.......A big congratulations is in order to the Mount Brydges Cougars Blue team! Winners of the Mitchell PeeWee tournament local league championship. They played hard and won the semi-final this morning against Blyth by a score of 4-0 and then defeated the New Hamburg Huskies 4-2 to win the tournament final this afternoon. Congratulations Blue!! A job well done!
Trainer Pat