Impressive Silver for 04's In Stratford, News, Pre-Novice, 2012 (Maitland PEP Ice Sharks AAA Spring Hockey)

This Team is part of the 2012 season, which is not set as the current season.
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May 18, 2012 | Greg McNevan | 1361 views
Impressive Silver for 04's In Stratford
    In what was a fantastic display of hockey on Sunday at the Stratford Spring Spectacular, the boys fell just short of a gold medal losing 2-1 to Southwest Jets in the final.

    Our first game on Friday was against a very good Bluewater Sharks team.  The teams battled back and forth all game ending in a 3-3 tie.  Friday afternoon the boys traveled out to St. Marys for a game against Southwest White, a team we had handle in the GTA Showdown.  A much improved and determined Southwest team had us 2-1 going into the 3rd before we really started to play Ice Sharks hockey.  With our first complete period of the tournament we went on to a 7-2 win.
    Saturday saw us face a couple teams we hadn't met yet this spring, Edge Hockey from Kitchener and PSE from St. Mary's.  In the morning game we faced a really good skating Edge team.  Our great positional play and persistent forecheck was too much for them to handle in a 5-1 Ice Shark win.  At this point we knew a win would guarantee us a 2nd place seeding for the semi final.  In this game the boys really turned up the offence, with each line tallying at least 2 goals in a 9-4 win.  
    This set up a rematch with Bluewater Sharks in the semi-final. It was a back and forth battle through the first 2 periods.  With great goal tending, and an excellent penalty kill we killed off a full 3 minutes of 5 on 3 against us in the second period.  Everyone stayed positive on the bench, and turned it up after the kill scoring 3 unanswered in a 4-1 win.  This was a game where this group of kids really took their play to the next level, and they carried that play into the final.
    The final would be against a team that is becoming a rival, the Southwest Jets (Blue).  Southwest came out with speed and got up 2 goals before the 6 minute mark of the first.  With some focus, and some encouragement the boys turned the game around.  Well, this time we can say the team that deserved it the most did not win!    We out played SWest the remainder of that game but with some great goaltending, and some good defensive plays around their own net they held us to just 1 goal.  A disappointing loss, but an impressive Silver Medal!  
    As Parents and coaches we are extremely proud of the accomplishments of this group so far this spring.  Two tournaments two Silvers, and we are not done yet!  We are going to get the GOLD boys it is only a matter of time.   We have played against 9 different teams this spring ranging from Ajax to Sarnia, and to be able to say we are in the top 2 of all those teams is a great accomplishment!  Keep up the hard work!

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