It’s a long drive to Wabasca and Slave Lake through the band of black spruce and aspen in the boreal forest of northern Alberta. It’s particularly long for a group of 12 and 13 year olds anticipating a tough opponent on their first road trip of the year.
But last Saturday, the Jasper PeeWee Bears boarded a 7 a.m. bus on Halloween day, drove six hours and put on quite a weekend show.
Jasper got off to a strong early start against the Wabasca Mustangs—a team that won its last game with an 18–1 victory—racking up three goals in the first period versus the Mustangs’ one, with markers from Matteo Tassoni, Sebastian Golla and Owen Kearnan who buried a fantastic, behind the net feed from Lucas Oeggerli.
You could tell from the stands that Wabasca was used to wheeling and dealing, but Bears’ goalie Kelan Polard was a rock between the pipes, and the big Jasper defensemen, Aiden Deagle and Justin McIsaac, kept the Mustang forwards wrapped up.
In the second, the Bears took their foot off the gas, while Wabasca found another gear, and 20 minutes later the Mustangs had not only made good on the two goal deficit, they had a one goal lead; 5–4 at the end of two. Oeggerli was the Jasper goalscorer, burying a Tassoni rebound off a slick defensive rush led by Josh Howes.
The third was a nailbiter, with Wabasca increasing its lead to two goals, and pouring on the physical game, while Jasper clawed back to tie it up midway through the period, only to go down by two again with five minutes to play.
Bears’ winger Dylan Dekker hammered home a slapshot from the left dot with under a minute to play to climb back within one, and then Golla rang one off the crossbar with five seconds left, but the win was not to be.
The Bears played a heck of a team game and despite the 8–7 defeat, Jasper’s players put a scare into a team that is the early favourite as best in the league.
On Sunday, the Bears rolled into Slave Lake for a game of an entirely different flavour. The Thunder spool a short bench of developing players, without the depth or finish of a team like Jasper. It took the Bears just 20 minutes to equal Saturday’s goal scoring output with two each from Golla and Dana Angebrandt, and singletons from Baden Koss, Dekker and Oeggerli. Hats off to the Slave Lake netminder who was absorbing a lot of rubber.
In the second and third periods, all of Jasper’s stars came out to shine. Led by Tassoni and impressive puck movement by Golla, d-man McIsaac broke clear and scored his first goal of the season from the hashmarks. Then Liam Crozier found his first paydirt high blocker side, followed by Deagle who poked home an Oeggerli rebound.
In the third, the Thunder came to play, getting two back, including a short-handed marker when Jasper was sloppy clearing the zone. With three minutes to play, hard driving forward Adrian Torres got his first of the season, beating the Slave Lake netminder low stick side.
At the final buzzer, Jasper was up by 10, for a 12–2 victory, evening the wins and losses for the road trip and chalking up their third win of the season.
The PeeWees are idle next weekend, but have games in Jasper on Nov. 14 against Fox Creek.
John Wilmshurst special to the Fitzhugh
