Our team enjoyed a full hockey weekend in Welland on the dates of
January 15-17 as we were one of twelve teams entered in the Bantam LL/HL
division of the Ernie Clayton Annual Hockey Tournament.
Since this was our first tournament of the
season for our team, many families arrived early and settled into the Days Inn &
Suites hotel in Niagara Falls, in anticipation of our first game in Welland.
Our first game of the tournament was against the hometown Welland #2
Bantam team who play out of the Niagara District Local league. This game started off in our team’s favour,
with two goals in the first period from our first line.
Our team captain, Braden Clarke, led by example by putting in an impressive first goal, which was assisted by Gavin Pakulis. Later in this same period, our defencemen, Liam McAlister provided a great assist to Gavin who secured a second strong goal of the game.
Entering the second period of our game we had a comfortable lead, still playing well; however, we failed to have any scoring opportunities. Welland managed to sneak one puck past our outstanding goaltender Ethan before the end of the second period. In the third period, our team somehow lost our focus and slipped allowing Welland to score 5 additional goals to take over and win the game, 7-2.
Post game dinner was held at Montanas in Niagara Falls where our families took up half of the restaurant and enjoyed a great dinner, beverages and desserts that helped us soothe our hockey blues. During our dinner we celebrated a number of birthdays including Brodie Clarke’s on Friday and belated birthdays in December for Spencer Noseworthy, Eli Stowe and Evan Shipp.
Walking back from the restaurant to our hotel, a friendly snowball fight broke out, which I must admit I may have had a hand in instigating.
Back at the hotel our players enjoyed spending time in the pool and hot tub, which they seemed to have exclusivity to, possibly due to the over splashing and football, foul play. This fun would have gone on all night; unfortunately, the maintenance crew closed up the pool at 10pm. Since, our next game was only noon the next day, coaches extended our players curfew to midnight and led out players to Clifton Hill to enjoy the tourist attractions.
Our second game of the tournament took place at the Vale Health & Fitness Centre in Port Colborne, a $32 million, state-of-the-art facility for sport, recreation, health, wellness, entertainment, and commerce – all under one roof - the first of its kind in the Niagara region. We played on one of their two NHL sized ice pads against the Kitchener Admirals, who play out of the Kitchener Minor Hockey Bantam House League. This was a great setting for our second game, perfect for our team’s official photographer Don to capture photos of our players during our game. We enjoyed the added ambience by a trumpeter who played a number of recognizable hockey tunes to increase the excitement to our game.
Braden had a lightning fast slap shot that only video replay could have confirmed if it was a goal or not; unfortunately, the referees waived this off as a no goal. For the most part of this game, both teams were equal and this proved to be our best game of the tournament for our team. Going into the third period, I told our players that this was going to be a one goal game and that we needed to build our momentum and claim that goal to win. Although, we weren’t without our chances, we just couldn’t reach the back of the Admirals net with the puck. The final score was 2-0 for our Kitchener opponents.
On a spur of the moment our team requested that we all go out for lunch, being unprepared for this request, I consulted the arena staff for a restaurant big enough for our group and they recommended that we go to Reeb’s house. With no reservation, staff had to quickly call in more staff to help serve all 30+ of us who showed up to their establishment. Players enjoyed their arcade and billiard’s room, while they waited for their lunch to arrive. We also used this time before our next game to do some of our off ice challenge activities between Team Pakulis vs. Team Shipp. Evan Scott won the arm wrestling contest against Eli Stowe. Evan Shipp won the black jack contest against Jack. Ethan Crozier outsmart Spencer in the NHL trivia. Back at the arena Braden won the shooting accuracy contest over Gavin, while Austin was faster than Owen to get suited up in his hockey gear. However, the highlight of our days challenges was our team tug of war that we did between our players in the parking lot, it was definitely a close match until the coaches got involved, as expressed by the strong objection echoed by Austin.
As it stands now, Team Shipp is ahead of Team Pakulis by one point with one more challenge, dizzy race, to be played between Ethan Crozier and Liam McAlister, in the event of a tie between challenges one final tie breaking challenge of darts will be played to find a winner of our off ice challenge.
Our third game of our tournament was against the Oro Thunder, who play out of the Georgian Bay Triangle Local League. Again our team started strong in the first period with Braden capturing a goal, assisted by Gavin in the final minute of the game, seconds after Oro scored the first goal of the game, allowing us to tie them before the end of the first period. Into the second period Oro claimed two more goals to claim a push by our team for the lead in the second period. Our team fought back in the third period capturing two goals, the first goal by Braden assisted by Gavin and the second goal in this period by Gavin, unassisted. Great effort by our team; unfortunately, Oro played hard and secured 5 goals in the last period, to win the game 8-3.
All of our players played well, here are some of my observations over the weekend:
- Ethan – played hard and became extremely more territorial with his crease and starting deflecting and positioning pucks to the corners after shots that helped our defence with pushing the puck up to our forwards.
- Spencer – returned to the line up to join his team, allowing Jack to his defence line, Spencer showed a lot of energy and self control and was responsible for some great backchecking.
- Jack – brought his trademark intensity with him for the full weekend, he derived this trait from the Montreal Canadiens summer camp that he has attended the last couple of summers, where he laced up with many of the pros for a week long, high action program. Jack was credited for stopping some multiple player breakaways.
- Owen – demonstrated more confidence and skill with controlling and carrying the puck skating wide of his opponents and timed his passes perfectly to avoid being caught while allowing our other forwards to get in clear position of making a break out moment to the opponents net.
- Gavin – in keeping with our coaches suggestions skated closer to the net with the puck resulting in more goals and assists for our team.
- Austin – was a strong contender for the puck and was seen racing and digging along the boards for the puck, in addition, remained in proper position to receive upward passes from our defence and carried it into our opponents zone.
- Eli – saved our team from countless scoring chances by getting to the puck first and getting the puck out of our zone’s harm way by clearing it hard and up along the boards.
- Evan Shipp – made a huge difference for our team when he interfered with the other team’s players who were trying to position themselves in front of our net to do a quick one timer
- Braden – used his trademark, hard shot to put some fear into the other goalies and was there each time putting pressure on the other team, capitalizing on their mistakes to get rebounds or pick up lost pucks.
- Evan Scott – used his patience to consider his passing options and drew our opponents to him before feeding the puck up to our forwards with little resistance, offering them freedom to receive and skate with the puck.
- Liam – offered our forwards that guarantee of keeping the puck into the opponents zone, as well as, continuous shots from the point to the net for deflections and/or rebounds.
Even though our team did not make it to the semi games, most families stayed the full weekend in Niagara Falls, allowing players and families to spend some quality time with one another and were seen taking in many of the attractions in Niagara Falls, including the haunted houses, 3D Imax movie houses, etc.
Many thanks to all our parents and families for your investment in support, time and expenses to make this weekend, a memorable one for all of our players, it is much appreciated by all players and the coaching staff.
On behalf of our Bantam LL1 team, I sent an email to extend congratulations to The Welland #2 team for winning the 2016 Ernie Clayton Annual Hockey Tournament, this team won 4 games and only one tie to beat the Port Colborne team in the final game by 2-0, to win their hometown weekend tournament.