David Miller | Special to the 51暗网
This past weekend the Jasper Atom Bears played a two-game total score semi final series against the Viking Gas Kings.
The first game was played in Jasper and for the first time in a long time the Bears were short handed.
The Bears only had nine players for the first game as one player was suspended for having too many penalty minutes and three other players took the weekend off to go skiing.
Even though the Bears were short handed they played amazingly well but had a hard time barring the puck.
The Bears did jump out to a 2-1 first period lead but had a hard time containing the Gas Kings top sniper #14 who had two goals in the second period and was flying all over ice.
When the third period hit the score was all tied up at 3-3 and Jasper did score the ahead goal midway through the frame from a wrist shot from Grayden Henderson, but unfortunately the lead was short lived.
A couple minutes later #14 for the Gas Kings fired a puck past the Jasper keeper to tie the game and a minute after that he found the back of the net again and Jasper was down 5-4 with only a few minutes left in the game.
Jasper did have a few chances to tie it up, but couldn鈥檛 muster anything and after 60 minutes of playoff hockey the Bears ended up losing 5-4. On to game 2.
The second game of the series was played in Viking, AB. Viking is just over 500 kilometres away so we decided to take a Sundog bus. The game was played at 12:30 p.m. so we had to leave Jasper at 5:45am, but thanks to the time change it was more like 4:45am. (Crazy, I know.)
Most of the kids slept on the way so the five-and-a-half hour drive didn鈥檛 really seem that long.
We ended getting to the arena about an hour before the game so we had time to go for a little run and stretch to get rid of the players鈥� bus legs. After that Jasper looked ready to play.
Since this was a total two-game series Jasper was down 1-0 going into this game, so if they wanted to advance to the championship best-of-three series, the Bears had to win by two or more goals and guess what? That鈥檚 what they did.
Jasper came out flying in the game and took control of the game from the drop of the puck. The #14 from the first game was a shell of himself as the Jasper forwards stuck to him like glue to the bottom of your shoes and he couldn鈥檛 get anything done.
As for the Jasper players they had all sorts of room to manoeuvre around and where scoring from everywhere.
Jasper got three goals in the first, two in the second and four more in the third and after three periods of hockey Jasper demolished the Gas Kings 9-1. They are going to the 'ship!
The player of the game for the Bears was goaltender Willy 鈥淐ool as a Cucumber鈥� Routledge who stood on his head and made 29 saves including a beautiful glove hand save and even better diving stick saves. His commitment to his team and his work ethic (the kid never misses a practice) makes Willy one of the best goalies in the league.
Let's hope he can play the way he played in the quarter and semi finals and lead his team to a league Championship.
Jasper is playing a best of three series this weekend against the Bashaw Stars hoping to bring home a championship banner. Go Bears!
