First year Atom B team plays inaugural game

The Jasper Bears Atom B team played twice over the weekend in the opening round of the Sturgeon Pembina 2008/09 season, in two home games against Slave Lake and Fox Creek.

While the team put up a good fight, there was no victory for the young team of boys and one girl, losing to Slave Lake on Saturday 3-5 and to Fox Creek on Sunday 1-8.

Despite the losses, the team worked hard over the weekend. Coach Chuck Barker, who has been coaching for more than 20 years, said “because we’re a first-year team, we’re making the transition from novice hockey, where you don’t play a league, to actually playing on a league where things are a lot more organized. You take things from the game that we’re trying to improve, team play and those types of things.”

Barker said he was happy with the children’s performance as they “played hard and had a lot of energy and I thought we had good goaltending.” The Bears’ goaltender, Jake Melanson, held off over 90 shots on goal over the weekend. Barker called Melanson a “great little goaltender, so that’s obviously going to be a benefit to us this year, for sure.”

Training twice a week with the children, Barker is focused on “player development and that all the kids have a positive experience while they’re playing.” He is confident that the team will “get better as the year goes on and we get a little more experience.”

The Atom league age group normally consists of nine- and 10-year-olds, but the Jasper Bears brought up three eight- and nine-year-old novice players to make up the numbers. 

The goal scorers for the weekend were Liam Fengle-Wood who scored one in each game. Jake Huckaluck and Tegan Barker also scored a goal each in Saturday’s game.

It was a good weekend for the other minor hockey teams in Jasper. The Midget boys beat Athabasca 8-1 on Saturday and 7-1 on Sunday. The Midget girls team tied with Edson on Sunday 1-1 and the Jasper Pee Wee team won both Saturday against Hinton 3-1 and Sunday against Edson 5-4.

The Jasper Wolves lost both Friday to Edson 9-7 and Saturday to Hinton 9-5.

This weekend, the Wolves play Friday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. both nights and there is a Pee Wee tournament on all weekend.