By Graham Perkins /
The Bantam A1 team was trying to make club history over the weekend when they travelled to St. Albert, Alta. to play in the John Reid Memorial Tournament.
The boys had not lost a tournament all year, bringing home the championship in Medicine Hat in November and most recently at the Burnaby Minor Christmas tournament.
Up against some of the toughest teams in the continent in St. Albert, the Bruins made it all the way to the final game before succumbing to the L.A. Selects, 3-2.
“They’re the best team I’ve ever seen at this level,” said BWC head coach John Batchelor. “It was like they were playing basketball on skates. They got the puck and it was like, ‘uh oh, fast break time’.”
The tournament didn’t start off in BWC’s favour. On the first shift in the opener against the Calgary Bisons, one of the Bruins skaters somehow managed to shave a piece of his shoulder blade off in a freak injury and had to bow out of the tournament in considerable pain. The club went on to lose the game 3-1 (including an empty-netter) but didn’t get discouraged, knowing that they outplayed the Bisons and had the misfortune of running into a hot goaltender.
The team didn’t look back from the first game, and won the next two games, 8-4 and 4-3, while the Bisons apparently had nothing left in the tank and didn’t win another game.
The quarter finals were a showdown between two of the best teams in Western Canada. The Sherwood Park Flyers were ranked number one in Alberta and had posted a record of 18-3-6 in the regular season, and will be one of BWC’s main challengers at the Western Bantams in April.
They showed their pedigree early on, not giving BWC anything easy and capitalizing on any mistakes the Bruins made. With five minutes left to play in the third period, the Flyers were leading 3-2, but BWC rallied with two goals and added an empty netter to seal it, 5-3.
“Sometimes people say after the first game, ‘these guys aren’t that good’, but these boys know how to compete and they know how to win. They’re never out, and they proved it in that game yesterday.”
The semi-finals game was against Pursuit of Excellence, a Kelowna-based selects team. BWC managed to squeeze past them, but at a cost: Jace Hennig, one of the team’s top three forwards, broke his wrist when he was pinned up against the boards and will sideline him for three weeks.
Had Hennig been healthy for the final game against the Selects, it might have turned the tide just enough to give BWC the upset victory. But as it stands, Batchelor is content with the fact that his team went toe-to-toe with the best team in North America and gave them a run for their money.
After the tournament, forward Anthony Ast and defenseman Joseph Carvalho were named to the All-Star team, an honour they’ve both become accustomed to. BWC opens its postseason this weekend against the Thunderbirds. |