One of the interesting things about midget hockey stems from the inevitable attrition that occurs as the numbers of hockey players dwindle through their teenage years. The league has to constantly reinvent itself, sending our kids to a different suite of teams every year. While this happens to some extent at every level, it is most apparent with the midgets, and this year the community of Maskwacis (which means Bear Hills in their native Cree language) has re-entered Jasper鈥檚 hockey universe. Last weekend the Maskwacis Midget Hawks visited Jasper to take on our hometown Bearcats in two well contested games.
Maskwacis has some serious scoring talent and in both games the Bearcats had to dig deep to keep up. But keep up they did with a thrilling back-and-forth, high-scoring affair that went down to the wire during the first game. The score was 2-2 after the first period, 6-6 after the second and 8-8 with four minutes to play in the third period. Too many goals to accredit here, but Elvis Gorontzy-Slack, Hunter Zenner and Tegan Barker were offensive standouts for Jasper, while Matthew Park and Jack Hilworth were doing what they could on the blue line to quell the Hawks鈥� attacks. Jake Melanson had his greatest challenge of the season between the pipes.
But with a minute twenty-nine to play in the game, and Jasper on the penalty kill, Maskwacis executed a picture-perfect 2-on-1 to score the winning goal. Tough to pick a winner in this one, with the Hawks playing a pretty passing game and Jasper really digging deep to rise to the challenge. But after 60 minutes in game one, it was our Bearcats going down 9-8 to the Hawks.
Game two on Jan. 8 was equally as exciting, but a much lower scoring affair. Gorontzy-Slack started it off for the Bearcats with a little over a minute to play in the first, taking a pass from Barker and making no mistake in tight to give the Bearcats the early lead. Credit the Jasper defensive corps of Park, Hilworth, Dimitri Buttazzoni (filling in from his usual role as a winger) and Brendan Auger for limiting Maskwacis to two shots for the opening frame.
It took the Hawks just four minutes to equalize, early in the second period, but then Rhys Malcolm regained Jasper鈥檚 one-goal lead, burying a dish from Zenner. It looked like Jasper was going to take that lead into the dressing room, but then Bearcat game two goaltender, Severin Golla, failed to track down a late shot from the Maskwacis captain and this game was all tied up after two periods.
In the third it was all Hawks as they found the back of the net three times while Jasper was unable to score. This was not from a lack of trying as the combination of Ty Bangle and Liam Fengler-Wood, teamed up with veteran centre Eric Paukstat, pressed the Hawks, but the bounces were just not going Jasper鈥檚 way.
The game ended 5-2 in favour of the Maskwacis Hawks. Another tough loss for the Bearcats, but lately they have been playing well against tough opponents. Next weekend, the Midgets hit the road for a two-game series against Fort McMurray. However, instead of travelling all the way to the boreal north to play these games, hard-working team manager, Marcia DeWandel has arranged to play both games in Spruce Grove, cutting the travel for both teams. You can read about it here next week.
John Wilmshurst
Special to the 51暗网
