Sometimes size doesn’t matter. Sometimes it does.
Last Saturday, with injuries and Christmas holidays taking their toll on the Jasper Bantam Bearcats lineup, the Strathcona Warriors rolled into town with a full roster and a mind to take advantage of the short-benched hometown team.
Turns out the nine Bearcats skaters had something else in mind, making for a great 60 minutes of hockey.
Strathcona got the ball rolling halfway through the first period, burying a loose puck past Bearcats netminder Duncan McLeod. McLeod had a very busy opening frame, facing 15 shots, a typical two period quota. But Jasper would equalize three minutes later when Magnus Stenlund sent in a point shot that ricocheted off a Strathcona skate and into the net. All tied up at one.
But with time winding down in the opening 20 minutes, the Warriors struck again, poking another loose puck into the back of the net to take a one goal lead into the first intermission. Two to one Strathcona.
Penalties are never good for a team, but when you are rolling nine skaters, killing penalties forces every player to pay an extra price.
This game was being tightly policed by the men in stripes, so the parade to the penalty box presented an extra challenge for Bearcats’ coach Gary Hilworth. But that gate swings both ways and with Strathcona in the box, Jasper’s free wheeling forward, Rhys Malcolm was able to take full advantage, tying the game on a beauty snipe early in the second.
That tie lasted about as long as a plate of Shirley’s fries, with the Warriors scoring right off the ensuing faceoff, and regaining their one goal advantage.
Five more minutes of end-to-end play was enough to charge Cooper Hilworth’s batteries and he got Jasper’s third and fourth goals, bookending Strathcona’s fourth goal and innumerable trips to the sin bin. Malcolm, with under a minute on the clock, picked the Warriors’ top shelf to give his team a one goal cushion going into the second intermission.
In the third period, the effects of the short bench started to show for the Bearcats, as passing plays started to break down, and the defense was unable to maintain the coverage it had in the opening 40 minutes.
Malcolm scored his third of the game, and Jasper’s sixth, to put the Bearcats up by two about five minutes in, but then it was all Strathcona. Two goals—on two nearly identical plays, a quick pass from the half wall to the slot, and a one timer to the back of the net—tied it at six with 2:45 left to play.
The crowd at the Jasper Arena thought it was all over two minutes later as Hilworth picked up a loose puck in the neutral zone and broke in all alone. But his legs were jelly, and the Strathcona defense caught up to him before he could get a shot off.
When the buzzer sounded, nothing was settled with the Bearcats and the Warriors knotted at 6.
That was the Bearcats’ last game in 2015. But the action picks up immediately in 2016 for Jasper’s Bantam boys as they host five teams for their home tournament on the Jan. 2 weekend.
If you make it your New Year’s resolution to catch more hometown hockey, you can make good on it before the first week is out.
Hope to see you in the stands.
John Wilmshurst
Special to the Fitzhugh
