DQ Challenge Cup weekend review, News, Midget LL2, U18, 2017-2018 (Paris Minor Hockey)

This Team is part of the 2017-2018 season, which is not set as the current season.
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Jan 07, 2018 | midget2 | 755 views
DQ Challenge Cup weekend review
Our Midget Wolfpack participated in the South Huron Minor Hockey Association’s – DQ Challenge Cup this past weekend in Exeter; unfortunately, the snow storm weather ended up being our team’s biggest contender, costing us one game as we had to forfeit, as most of our team couldn’t get to the arena.

Friday morning many of us were waking up to snow storm alerts on our phones, so many of our families left early to arrive before the start of the storm; however, it wasn’t the amount of snow that was troubling but the white out conditions that caused for havoc driving.  So much so, that two of our families had their vehicles stuck and needed tow truck assistance.  While other families either witnessed accidents or were re-routed numerous times due to road closures thankfully GPS helped everyone get to their destinations; however, it took twice as much time to travel the same route.

Upon arriving to our first game and registering our team I learned that this tournament had an impressive 55 Local League teams scheduled to play over 3 days at 3 local arenas.  This tournament had teams from Novice all the way up to Midget participating. 

Hats off and congratulations to the planning committee and the countless volunteers who put this tournament together and ran these games for all of our players. 

With this many teams it explains why our team had trouble finding one lodging to accommodate our full team, instead our team was split up into two Inn’s, in Grand Bend and Bayfield.

Our Wolfpack met up first against the Lucan Irish at the Hensall Arena, an arena that we would soon learn was even more frigid than outside, so much so, that our players water bottles were literally frozen by the end of the game.  Even worse was the impending frost bite that was seen on their bleached white looking toes.  The only thing our players were looking forward to was a warm shower back at the hotel or lounging in the hot tub so that they can warm up.

For the first period both teams were at par with one another and we wound down the period to a no score end.  The first half of the second period remained the same even style play for both teams until Lucan found their first goal against our Wolfpack and with just over a minute to the buzzer gained a second goal to end the period with a two goal lead.  Our Wolfpack continued to search hard for a goal and made some great attempts but the Irish were stubborn and did not give up a goal.  Instead Lucan continued to push hard and managed to score an additional four goals in the third period to win 6-0 over our Wolfpack.  Congratulations to Wyatt for being awarded ‘Player of the Game.’

After our first game, like many teams, our team had reservations to eat at Crabby Joe’s in Exeter where players and parents enjoyed conversing, dining and making predictions about some of the upcoming games.  We also enjoyed watching the IIHF – Juniors hockey bronze game between USA and Czech, knowing that one of our teammates, Fletcher and his dad, Greg were in attendance, so we were hoping to catch a glimpse of them at the game.  Later, that night, back at the hotel, we watched and cheered on Canada win gold over Sweden, yet Fletcher and Greg, again had better seats to the game than us as they were watching live in the Keybank Centre in Buffalo.  No, Fletcher did not catch the Silver medal thrown into the stands by a player on the Sweden team.

Since, the storm held our players back from getting to the 9:30pm game, we had to forfeit this game against Listowel Cyclones.

Saturday we were scheduled to play at 4:10pm but we would have to wait until after the noon games on Saturday to find out how all the teams were placed after two games each before the schedule was updated.  As the results came in we learned that we would play our 3rd game at the South Huron Recreation Centre in Exeter against Seaforth Stars.  Driving to the arena we saw close to 50 snowmobilers, half of them parked outside Crabby Joe’s, I half joked to Rick with this weather that some players might show up on a snowmobile.  Not 5 minutes later two players from Seaforth enter the arena carrying their hockey gear still wearing their snowmobile helmets.

Unlike our first game, our match against the Seaforth Stars had goals in the first period, with Seaforth thanking their lucky Stars with the first goal of the game at the 6:10 mark.  Wolfpack returned with a goal of our own with just over a minute left in the period.  Our returning player, Ben W, from the recent injury list, had an unassisted goal that is best described as a coast to coast play that he traveled around everyone to score.  Fantastic first goal of the game and of the season, for him.  Our celebrations were cut short as the Stars scored with just 10 seconds left in the first period, regaining their lead.

The second period was a lot of back and forth play for each team and both goalies were demonstrating some great saves; however, with just over a minute left in the period Seaforth striked back with a goal.

Into the third period, Wolfpack was losing ground against the Stars until Calvin made a brilliant race to the opposing net and scored a back handed goal that instantly quieted the Seaforth bench.  Great job to Owen for getting an assist on Calvin’s goal.  Although, our team had numerous other great scoring attempts from many of our players, the luck was not our team’s side.  Congratulations to Jack and Spencer for being awarded ‘Player of the game.’

A special thank you to my fellow coaching partners: Greg Thibodeau, Rick Mason and Shawn Novak for your support this weekend and many thanks to all families for all of the time, patience and expenses that you incurred this weekend.  I know our players appreciate everything that all of our families have done to make this weekend a great time together.

This Tuesday we will start the second half of our league season as we visit Simcoe to play the Warriors 2, which I hope will be a more civil style game than our last encounter.

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