David Miller | Special to the 51暗网
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, grab yourself a seat and get your popcorn ready, because I鈥檓 going to tell you about one of the best hockey seasons in the history of Jasper hockey.
The 2019-2020 Jasper Atom Bears will go down as one of the greatest teams to ever come out of Jasper.
What made the Bears so special was that it was full of hockey players, what I mean by that is every kid loves the game of hockey.
When they weren鈥檛 practicing as a team or dominating their opponents on the ice, the Bears team would be going for skates at JPL or they would be at home practicing their slap shots and stick handling skills.
Every player wanted to get better as the year went on and they did.
The only thing that could stop the Bears from dominating their final series against Bashaw was an invisible enemy called COVID-19.
Three days before they were about to hit the road, the Bears season got cancelled.
Ironically, COVID-19 did save the season for Barshaw because everyone in the hockey world know that the Bears were going to (in my best Rock voice) 鈥淜ick their candy as*es!鈥�
Even though the season was cancelled before it ended, the league did still have to crown a champion and with a 14-2 regular season record and a dominating playoff record, the 2019-2020 Jasper Bears were your Atom Tier 4 league champions.
The kids were pumped to hear the news and Pete at the rink will have some work to do when he hangs the league championship banner in the arena.
The Bears鈥� season didn鈥檛 end at the league playoffs, they were supposed to go on to provincials where they were hoping to take down their division.
Unfortunately with COVID-19 that didn鈥檛 happen.
The good news is that the Bears did win their zone during the provincial playdowns and will be receiving a banner to hang in the area to show off their achievements.
The Bears wanted three banners this year, they got two.
And as Meatloaf would say: 鈥淭wo out of three ain鈥檛 that bad.鈥�
This magical team will be split up next year as some kids are moving up to PeeWee, but in two years from now they will be back together and will be looking to finish what they started.
Go Bears!
