I was watching the warmup before last Sunday’s Jasper Bantam Bearcats game versus the Athabasca Hawks, and I thought, “wow, our boys are in deep this time”.
The Hawks were skating fluidly in their zone, hammering pucks at their goaltender who was coolly plucking them out of the air. These kids were big and seemed to show the kind of discipline that Jasper’s more run-and-gun style struggles against.
They’ve also played well against Slave Lake, against whom Jasper split two games a few weekends back. I was impressed.
But then the game started. It took nearly five minutes for the first shot to be registered for either team, but in that time I saw growing confidence in Jasper’s first year Bantams. There was the likes of Eric MacMahon who took a few healthy hits, but kept on skating hard, and Trenton Rea who was carrying the puck with ease and battling along the boards against much bigger kids.
It was Jax Kading who got Jasper’s first shot, exactly five minutes in, beating a Hawk to a loose puck in the neutral zone, muscling his way into the offensive zone and forcing the Athabasca netminder to make an acrobatic save. And it was big Troy Jackson, already quite comfortable with rough and tumble Bantam play, taking it to the Hawks in the neutral zone and forcing turnovers.
I had clearly underestimated our team.
Twelve minutes in, Cooper Hilworth, on the forecheck on the penalty kill, dug for a puck in the corner, outworked the Athabasca defense, wheeled to the front of the net and buried it, giving Jasper a one goal lead and Hilworth his first of three goals in the game.
About a minute later Rhys Malcolm was stymied on a breakaway, but then immediately got a second chance on the same shift and made no mistake, firing a backhander over the outstretched blocker of the Hawks goalie, who juggled the puck for a second before letting it fall into the net.
This was also Malcolm’s first of three goals on the afternoon.
Malcolm created Jasper’s third goal, separating the puck from a Hawks’ forward behind the net with his body, and feeding Hilworth who was camped out in front and fired it in.
Equally as deft was the pass made by Elvis Gorontzy-Slack to Joel Peleshaty in the slot. Peleshaty wristed one home for Jasper’s fourth goal.
By the time the second period was over, Malcolm would complete his hattrick, and Jasper netminder Duncan McLeod would register a shutout for his half of the game, with the scoreboard reading Jasper 6, Athabasca 0.
The Hawks were able to score one in the third as an Athabasca forward split the Jasper defense and walked in all alone from the blueline. Hilworth would get that one right back though, completing his hattrick, and then with time winding down, Gorontzy-Slack would round out Jasper’s scoring on the power play, once again with hard work and tenacity.
When the final buzzer sounded, Jasper was on top 8–1, an outcome I could not have predicted just minutes before the opening puck-drop, proving once again that perceptions and reality are as alike as Don Cherry and Ron McLean.
The Bearcats hit the road now for the rest of 2015, starting next weekend in Whitecourt and Fort Saskatchewan.
I won’t likely see you in the stands, but you can read about it here.
John Wilmshurst Special to the Fitzhugh
