Oct 13, 2015 | jkritzer | 1236 views
Edge Again Finalists
This past weekend the Erie North Shore Storm Novice Majors (along with 3 other Storm teams) descended on Whitby to take part in the Edge Again Cup.
The team hit the ice Friday morning in a tilt against the Whitby White team. A guest appearance on the bench by Coach Shawn helped the team pick holes in the Whitby offense leading to a strong first outing of the tournament and a victory.
Our second game saw a great back and forth matchup against the Cambridge Hawks with an eventual 7-4 win. With that, the team retired to the hotel for the day and enjoyed some great team bonding in the pool and the hallways.
The next morning saw us matched up against another Whitby team, this time in Blue. Although the scoreboard indicated otherwise, it was a tight 4-0 loss and our first one of the tournament. The afternoon saw us match up against a team from Niagara Falls and had us come out on top, 9-2. This guaranteed us a berth in the semi-finals on Sunday with a return match against Cambridge.
The semi finals was a fantastic back and forth match with a very determined Cambridge team coming out with the intention of making it to the finals. A late 3rd period penalty saw us down a man and fighting to remain deadlocked at 3 a piece. With seconds ticking down in the Storm penalty, a loose puck floated through the neutral zone, our penalized player got out of the box, jumped on the loose puck and buried it all but guaranteed our spot in the finals. As the seconds ticked down, Cambridge put out the extra attacker but Storm was able to dominate control of the puck and see their way to the eventual win.
Our final game would again see us match up against the Whitby Blue team and this time, we came out much more determined. Although we got down early, storm battled hard through 3 periods allowing goals only in the first period against us. Although we fought hard, with a minute and a half remaining, we were still down by 2 with a score of 3-1. As the seconds ticked away, our goalie was pulled and we sent out the extra attacker. Keeping the puck deep in the offensive end, we were able to put one past Whitby netminder bringing us to within one with 42 odd seconds left to go. For the faceoff, our tender returned to mind the net until we were able to get control of the puck and return it to the offensive end. The extra attacker rushed out to Whitby's end and with only 3.54 seconds left on the clock, we were able to put it past the Whitby netminder and tie the game.
Momentum had shifted and when the puck was dropped for the extra time, Storm attempted to rush the puck to the Whitby end. Unfortunately, a strong Whitby left winger was able to strip us of the puck and although we backchecked strong, a hard shot from the middle of the faceoff dot was able to beat our goaltender who was challenging hard out of his net to cut off any angles.
Fantastic outing by the Storm team and a hard earned, well deserved Silver medal against some very stiff competition. Coaching staff and parents could not be prouder of how far the team has come, great effort and a fun weekend by all.