Ice Wolves took their game up a level, cutting through a field of 18 teams to be one of the last 2 remaining teams to reach the novice A finals in the Oshawa OCHL tournament the first weekend in February.
Round robin wins against Stoufville (6-0), Port Perry (4-0), Napanee (6-3) led to an exhilarating semi-final showdown with Kingston that we prevailed in, (6-5). That set-up the A pool final against North Toronto, which blew out their opposition by an
*average* score of 12-0 on its road to the final. The Ice Wolves played their hearts out. eventually falling in a 4-0 loss.
Congrats also to our Mountain Wolves compatriots, who got to the finals of their pool, two Waterloo teams of 18 in the final six, great weekend for the black and gold...
Director of Scouting Operations Jason Ehrhardt later confirmed this was the North Toronto 2002-only tier 1 team. GTHL and its affiliate organizations use a different structure for Novices, with a major novice / minor novice designation for 7/8s, and nobody applies AA/AAA classification at Novice levels, which will often make classification of A/AE very subjective. Nonetheless, Ice Wolves showed up to play, leaving it all out on the ice and making us all very proud.
Our coaching staff showed the truly outstanding job they have done with a couple of great team achievements that weekend. First of all, an amazing team statistic. Despite some lazy refereeing (one of our games we scored 6 goals and registered 1 assist on the entire game sheet... say what!?) where they are not helping us much to enforce the lesson that an assist is as good as a goal. Despite this, *every* forward on our team still managed to register at least 3 points this weekend. I am sure all of our defense would have at least registered a point too if the referees decided recording assists mattered in between nap time and long TV timeouts with the opponent's bench. Combined with Brayden's two shutouts with tireless work from the defense, Ice Wolves hunted as a ferocious pack all weekend long.
Secondly, while we were up 3-0 with a fantastic start in the semi-final, this was against a team regularly shifting against us. The other team got back into the game and gave us trouble by very noticeably double-shifting 2 key players. Our coaching staff responded by rolling lines and playing everyone equally, showing that we can win as a team that way anyways, which is what it should be all about for Novice kids.
Since the coaching staff did such a great job, we can't be razzing them (as much...) for leading the team in penalty minutes with too many men bench minors. After all, you can still make "the show" guys, as this picture below clearly shows... counting players just isn't up there with the more important dimensions of the job anyways...
Anyways... now I go all dyslexic with all the stats.... Yadda yadda yadda everyone got a boatload of points...
Waterloo Ice Wolves 6
Stouffville 0
Goals Kyle Maloney 4, Cooper Way, Ethan Hepditch
Assists Callahan Reesor 2, Ryan McGeown, Michael Rintche, Cooper Way, Samuel Van Wyck
Shut out Brayden Shomphe
Ice Wolves 4
Port Perry 0
Goals Ryan Hanson, Ethan Hepditch, Kyle Maloney, Cooper Way,
Assists Samuel Van Wyck, Callahan Reesor, Ethan Hepditch
Shut out Brayden Shomphe
Ice Wolves 6
Napanee 3
Goals Kyle Maloney 3, Ryan Hanson, Ryan McGeown, Callahan Reesor
Assists Tyler Morrison
"A" Semi Final
Ice Wolves 6
Kingston 5
Goals Jacob Ehrhardt, Cooper Way 2, Ryan McGeown, Ryan Hanson, Sam Rintche
Assists Michael Rintche 2, Trevor Caldwell, Callahan Reesor 2, Ethan Hepditch, Kyle Maloney, Sam Van Wyck 2, Sam Rintche 2, Ryan Hanson