In a true Cinderella Story, the 1996 Waterloo Ice Wolves have captured the 2011 East/Central Alliance Championships for their Bantam MD Division in front of a vocal hometown crowd at Waterloo’s Rec Centre Arena.
In a rough start to the season, it was the fourth game before Waterloo saw their first goal and it was their seventh game before getting their first win.
However, since then they’ve been amazing and in their three tournaments, the Wolves were Semi-Finalists in one and Finalists in the other two. The top tournament highlight was winning on NHL ice at Detroit Red Wings Joe Louis Arena by scoring with 28 seconds left in the game to defeat Houston and advance to the Finals.
As the season progressed, Waterloo continued to get stronger and had only one loss in their last 15 league matches. This included four straight wins on their way to knocking off their arch-rivals the Hamilton Tigers in the Semi-Finals and the Burlington Bulldogs in the Finals.
Justin Kyryliuk scored the only goal in the first game of the Finals with an assist from Derek Grinyer to power Waterloo to victory with strong play from the Ice Wolves defence and outstanding goaltending from Dane Arthur in the 1-0 shut-out.
In the second game of the Finals, Waterloo dominated play right from the opening whistle. Jacob Sullivan had two goals and an assist, Riley Alvarez had one goal and two assists, AJ Seegmiller had three assists while Damian Scarpone and Marco Hensel each scored one goal apiece. Between the pipes, Josh Openshaw provided stellar goaltending to clinch the 5-2 win as the Ice Wolves captured the crown.
Kudos to Waterloo’s Head Coach Brad Forsyth and Assistant Coaches Shawn Walsh, Dave Munroe and Conor McCreary. The 1996 MD Ice Wolves has never made it to the finals in any previous year, but in their first year as coaches, the Ice Wolves have not only done it once, but have made it to the finals three times this season – finalists in two tournaments as well as winning Division final. Coach Forsyth said "Although the team went through a challenging time early on, these young men have shown a lot of character and have grown both as individuals and as a team throughout the season."
The Ice Wolves now move on to the Inter-League Alliance Championships in Stratford on April 8th-10th.
Back Row: Assistant Coach Dave Munroe, Aaron Hall, Assistant Coach Conor McCreary, Damian Scarpone, Ian Donovan, Josh Nejadrasoul, Matt Martinez, Justin Kyryliuk, Coach Brad Forsyth, Assistant Coach Shawn Walsh
Middle row: Derek Grinyer, Chris Whalen, Riley Alvarez, Devin Martin, Matt Schell, AJ Seegmiller, Marco Hensel, Colin Evans
Front Row: Jacob Sullivan, Dane Arthur, Josh Openshaw