May 11, 2011 | Terry Whiteside | 900 views
98's Finalists at Toronto Cup
The Major Peewee 98's showed major improvements since last season. We have learned to generate more offence and our defensive play has greatly improved as well.
In our 1st game Friday, we started very strong and won the game 2-0 over the Sure Shots. We generated numerous opportunities and the score could have easily been 8 or 9 nothing, except for the efforts of the opposition goalie. Craig Luinstra earned the shutout in his first action in AAA hockey.
Game 2 saw Quick Feet play less than 2 hours after our first game, but that didn't hurt our effort. All three lines and 6 defensemen played a very spirited game. Braeden Ellis handled the goaltending duties in this one and picked up the win 4-3 over Pro North Hockey.
In Game 3 we came up against a strong entry in the Simcoe Spartans. We battled this team very well and were on the receiving end of a couple of bad bounces that put us down in the game. We didn't quit and made the game very exciting right to the final buzzer. In the end we lost 5-3.
Game 4 was against Buffalo 98's. Again some bad bounces and miscues in our end put us behind in this game. We played well early, but fell complacent and finished with a fairly poor effort. Final score was 5-1 for Buffalo. This result put us into the semi-final the next morning against this same Buffalo team.
Our players were not happy with their Saturday efforts and really showed up to play on Sunday morning versus Buffalo. The Buffalo team tried to take advantage of the size of a couple of their big fellas, but it cost them a few trips to the "sin bin". We took advantage of the opportunities and scored twice on the powerplay early in the game to hold a 2-0 lead. Buffalo didn't quit and managed to tie the score and send the game into overtime. Quick Feet would not be denied as we had carried the majority of the play throughout the game. Early in the overtime period we were rewarded with a goal off a rebound to win the game 3-2 and put us into the final versus Simcoe Spartans.
In our 6th game in 3 days we started to show signs of fatigue. Most of it was mental fatigue as we made some defensive zone miscues that cost us in this game. We continued to battle, but could not generate any momentum. The final score was 6-1 for Simcoe.
The 98's can be proud of their work in this their 1st tournament of the season. As coaches we were encouraged by many of the good things our team did over the course of the six games. We look forward to practices this week to work on a few areas for improvement for the upcoming May Madness Tournament. It is great to see the development of the players in such a short amount of time. Good attitudes and good work ethic leads to great improvements. Keep up the momentum!