David Miller - Special to the 51暗网
This past weekend the Jasper Atom Bears played in their league quarter final in a two game total score showdown against the Mayerthorpe Mustangs.
The first game was played on Saturday in Jasper and you could feel the energy in the building as soon as you walked in. Willam 鈥淐ool as a Cucumber鈥� Routledge was a little nervous before the game knowing his partner in crime 鈥淕love Hand鈥� Schmidt was trying to win gold skiing at the Junior Olympics and wouldn鈥檛 make the next few games.
The Mustangs galloped to a quick lead after firing 14 shots on the Jasper net but thanks to the amazing play of 鈥淏ig Willy鈥� Jasper was only down by one goal and after 20 minutes of hockey the score was 2-1 for the Horsies.
When the second period hit the Bears beared down (do you see what I did there?) and outscored Mayerthorpe 4-0 including a hat-trick from Dustin Derksen in the final three minutes of the period.
Willy played amazing between the pipes that period including two big breakaway saves. The Bears were rolling.
In the third the Bears scored three more goals including two beauties from 鈥淒usty鈥� and a nice snip from Max Lescard. The Mustangs did score two of their own but after 60 minutes of playoff hockey it was 8-4 for the good guys.
Game 2 was played the next day and both Mayerthorpe and Jasper were hoping to wrap up this series and move on to the semi-finals.
Thanks to the game before Jasper was already up four goals going into this game.聽
The Mustangs scored the first goal of the game but not before Jasper scored three unanswered and that鈥檚 when things got a little crazy. The Mayerthorpe coaches aka 鈥淭hree Men and a Karen鈥� started screaming at their team to 鈥渢ake the body鈥� and they started taking runs at the Bears players (FYI there is no hitting in Atom hockey, the kids are eight- to 10-year-olds).
At one point of the game, one of the Mustangs players punched Max Lescard in the head and then chased Dustin Derksen down the ice and gave him a crosscheck.
I thought I was watching a recreation of the movie Slap Shot, it was unthinkable.
After everything was said and done Jasper did end up losing the game but won the two games overall with a total of 11-9.
Next weekend Jasper plays the Viking Gas Knights in the semis. Who needs to go on vacations in Mexico when you can go to small town Alberta? Go Bears!
