Feb 19, 2019 | Scott Firth | 475 views
Durham West Bolts & Hearts Tournament
This past weekend the Novice DS team made their final tournament appearance of 2019 at the Bolts & Hearts Rep Tournament hosted by the Durham West Lightning
Our small-but-mighty bench of PGHA warriors started the weekend with an unexpected Thursday night game in Ajax at the Classic Village Arena, where we met a familiar Clarington Flames Novice DS team we've already played once this season in a narrow 2-0 loss. The game ended 3-0 for the flames, but the game was far from one sided, with lots of pressure and shots on the Clarington Netminder. The IceKat Mascot was betrothed to be cared for by Fina Burrows for a gutsy and physical performance showing the coaches a few tricks we hadn't seen from her yet this season.
Game 2 on Friday afternoon was against a new opponent, the Scarborough Sharks, where again the final score didn't favour our IceKats, but did yield another well-deserved and strongly pressured goal by Sloane Silvestri - small victories bring high emotions. Game 2 ended 4-1, but again, our IceKats had strong presence in all three zones, offensive, defensive, and neutral. The message was clear, we weren't going to lay down for this tournament. In spite of a barrage of offense from Scarborough, Avery Carrick stood tall and made the coaches proud (as usual). Silvestri took home the mascot for her hard-earned goal, inspiring her teammates for the next game....
Game 3 was an early one for our crew (7:30am at the Don Beer, ouch) against a dominant and challenging opponent in the Host Durham West Lightning who are having an incredibly productive season. With the IceKats short a skater, a helpful call-up from the Novice Red Devils saw our first multi-goal game (2), with markers from Tessa Johnson and Roxanne Mersereau, both through challenging the net and smart offensive play. Game score ended 10-2, and saw a tough barrage of offense from Durham West. Another strong and gutsy performance from Avery Carrick. Focusing on our development, 2 markers in one game shows smarter and more effective neutral zone and offensive zone play is coming along well in the eyes of the coaches. Roxanne Mersereau showed her coaches a new level of intensity and focus, earning the mascot care taking rights until the evening.
Our final game was a mere 11.5-hours later, 7:00pm versus an unknown (unseen) opponent in the Oshawa Purple Panthers. In the room the energy was palpable with a loud and boisterous pre-game speech and individual challenges by the coaches. Offense came out on-point, and the IceKats rallied with a dominant first and second periods with seemingly infinite shots, but the Oshawa Goaltender proved too challenging to beat and the final game ended 3-0. For her aggressive play in the role as "nuisance" fore-checker as prescribed by the coaches, Cass Kirkwood earned the right as caretaker for the mascot until our next game.
All in all while the record was 0-4, the coaching staff and families saw small improvements and DEVELOPMENT in our players and we couldn't have been prouder. Scheduling-wise this was a challenging tournament, not to mention most families opted to drive, so for most families/players it was 4x back-and-forth to the 905 in a span of 3 days, 1 super-early game, a School-night game on Thursday, and a 2-in-12hrs run on Saturday. Such is the tournament-life of a representative hockey program.
From here, DS has 3 exhibition games left and a SUPER anticipated tilt with the well-known Clarington Flames at the Memorial Center, Saturday at 5pm. Bring all the noise you can to cheer our girls on as our season winds down! What a journey we've taken.
Continued thanks for the support of the families and the faith and commitment to this program.