Three weeks ago, the Whitecourt Huskies came to Jasper and laid a whoopin’ on our Atom Bears, winning 8-3 in a lightly contested match in the Jasper Arena. This past weekend, our kids travelled with their families to the land of pulp and natural gas for a two-game series looking for a little redemption.

And I think its fair to say, that they came away from Whitecourt with their pride intact.

In Saturday’s tilt, Jasper seemed to be off-balance from the get-go, with a lot of play in the Bears’ end for the first half of the first period. Nine minutes into the scrambly play, a Huskies forward slid the puck toward the net that managed to find its way under goaltender Severin Golla for the first goal of the game.

Jasper had an unusually short bench, rolling two centres with three winger pairings and six defence, and the team was struggling to get any offensive momentum. Nevertheless, the defence, led by veteran Magnus Stenlund, were able to hold the score to 1-0 to the halfway point of the game that marked the first appearance of both second half netminder, Duncan McLeod and the zamboni.

McLeod had a couple of bad breaks with a shot going in off his own player and a bouncer from the point that both found the back of the net and had Jasper down 3-0 at the end of two.

In the third period, Jasper seemed to shake off the roadtrip cobwebs and the rust from a two-week layoff. Barely two minutes into the final frame, Trenton Rea cleverly using his line partner Eric MacMahon as a decoy on a two-on-one, fired the puck past a surprised Whitecourt goalie for the Bear’s first marker.

The play was end-to-end for much of the rest of the period, with no more goals until, with 54 seconds to go, Rhys Malcolm walked in alone taking advantage of a bad Whitecourt change and popped in a high wrister. In the game’s dying seconds, MacMahon had a great chance to draw even, but he couldn’t stuff the biscuit in under the netminder’s pads. Game over. 3-2 Whitecourt.

On Sunday, the Bears had an even shorter bench as offensive sure-thing Malcolm couldn’t play, so the coaching staff moved defenceman Drew Tank up to centre. He’s been showing some offensive chops as of late and had earned a shot captaining a line.

This left Jasper rotating three defence – Stenlund, Matthew Park and Hunter Zenner – who all played heroically through 60 minutes of burning thighs that only Suzanne Somers understands.

We all know that kids like routines, and that was the case on Sunday, with the Bears going down 3-0 again by the time the second period was over. But just when it seemed like the Bears would fold up the tent, Elvis Gorontzy-Slack solved the Huskies’ backstop, ripping a high, hard wrister over his glove hand for the Bears first goal with 12 minutes to go.

Lots of time left.

Sure enough, about two minutes later, Tank, who had begun to doubt his contribution at centre, charged in on the right side and shelfed one to bring the Bears within one. The team was stoked!

Not two minutes after that goal, Tank repeated his trick to tie the game, 3-3. Three goals in four minutes and the Whitecourt coach had to call a timeout to calm his team down and try to break Jasper’s momentum.

Jasper kept the pressure on for the final minutes of the third, but couldn’t get the go ahead marker, and the game ended a 3-3 tie. 

Hats off to these comeback kids who showed a lot of heart in this tough, two-game road trip. They never gave up, and to see the second and third efforts from the likes of rookies Nathan Howes and Abhigya Devkota trying to help get their team a goal was inspiring.

The Bears play a couple of friendlies against Edson on Dec. 29, then they are back on the road in January for a swing through Fox Creek and Mayerthorpe.

See you in 2012.