Those of you with finely honed geographical sense will note that neither Whitecourt nor Mayerthorpe border on the North nor Baltic seas, but despite this, last weekend’s Jasper PeeWee Bears road trip through west central Alberta had a distinct Scandinavian flair.
Saturday saw a rag-tag convoy of vans and trucks leaving snow-bound Jasper heading for Whitecourt for an early afternoon start. All the vehicles arrived on time, but it took a full period for the Bears to show up and, by that time, they were four goals back.
Cooper Hilworth got the Bears on the board three minutes into the second, finishing an end-to-end rush and finally beating the steady Whitecourt netminder. While this goal shook the Bears back to life—as was evident from a more activated defence, led by Eric MacMahon and Drew Tank, and cleaner passing among the forwards—it was the Wolverines who would score twice more in the second.
In the dying minutes, on the power play, Rhys Malcolm found Hilworth in front of the net and Hilworth buried the puck again, pegging the score at 6–2 Whitecourt after 40 minutes.
Jasper and Whitecourt would exchange a pair of goals each in the third, off the sticks of Hilworth, working through the Wolverine team from centre ice, and left winger Severin Golla, who popped in a puck from the crease after it was worked loose by his sedulous line mates Trenton Rea and Jax Kading. Despite outshooting the league-leading Whitecourt 33 to 32, the Bears fell 8–4 on the scoreboard.
Lots of Swedish, not enough Finnish.
But Sunday, crossing Scandinavian frontier into Mayerthorpe, made a world of difference for the Bears.
Jasper started play right along with the opening puck drop and were up three to nothing before the Mustangs showed up to play.
Mayerthorpe ices a physically large team, but they are not nearly as aggressive on the puck as Whitecourt, leaving the Bears defence more time for moving the puck out of the Bears’ zone and allowing the forwards more space to get the puck to the net.
By the time the first period was out, the Bears’ three opening goals, two scored by Hilworth and one by line mate Matteo Tassoni, were added to by Malcolm’s first of the game. But, Mayerthorpe had clawed back with three of its own, leaving it 4–3 for Jasper at the end of one.
Malcolm scored again 23 seconds into the second period and Rea got his third of the year on a perfect feed from Hilworth, to reclaim Jasper’s three goal lead at 6–3.
For the rest of the frame, the Bears and Mustangs traded goals in a period studded with tic-tac-toe passing, acrobatic saves from the Bears’ netminder Duncan McLeod, and more than just a few goals. By the time the second period was over, the score stood at 9–6 in favour of Jasper.
In the third, Jasper’s blueliners not only bore down defensively, but were pitching in on the offence as Nathan Howes and Tyler Carlton were both channeling their inner Bobby Orr by carrying the puck well into the Mayerthorpe end.
Both teams earned one goal in the final 20 minutes, the Bears’ marker coming off Tassoni’s stick, finishing a three-way passing play from Malcolm and Hilworth.
So, despite fewer shots than Whitecourt on Saturday, Jasper’s 10 goal game in Mayerthorpe was a much more impressive statistic and was enough to overcome the Mustang’s seven, proving yet again that Swedish is nice, but, umm, finish is better.
Jasper is idle this weekend, but the team travels to Slave Lake and Whitecourt in two week’s time.
I’ll be in the stands taking notes, with my muse Tony Carlton.
John Wilmshurst
Special to the Fitzhugh
