The Atom AA White team finished the Christmas holidays with a road trip to Barrie to participate in the 23rd Annual Glenn Bellerby AA Tournament.
The Glenn Bellerby is well known as a tough tourney that attracts top shelf teams which is why we entered it. This year was no different including 2 teams coming off Silver Stick Championships in the Barrie Colts and Timmins North Stars as well as the North Bay Trappers (more on them later). Somehow we were scheduled to play all 3 in the round-robin making a top 4 finish that much more difficult but we wouldn't have it any other way.
We started the tourney with a 8-2 win over gritty but over-matched Sudbury team early Friday morning. Thankfully it served as a warm-up game as we hadn't played a game in 2 weeks. A bunch of our guys got in on the scoring including Castrilli with the hatty, Reider (2), Marty, Mango & Howie from the point. Not our best effort by a long shot but we got the job done and shook off the holiday cobwebs.
The 2nd game on Friday afternoon was against the Timmins North Starts who had just won their Silver Stick Regional tournament. Their 14th overall ranking is far too low as they are one of the best teams we've played this year. It took a total team effort including a beauty cross-ice pass by Castrilli to Gager who outworked & out-muscled the North Stars D to get the game winner. Easton took it from there with some big saves earning the shutout for the boys.
The best social committee in the league organized a pizza dinner back at the hotel for the families followed by watching Team Canada beat Sweden in the WJHC gold medal game (the boys were in bed by the 2nd period due to the early morning game). Pizza, Meg's famous pretzel bark and Canada winning gold made for a pretty sweet ending to day 1.
Saturday morning brought a match-up with the #9 ranked Barrie Colts who also just won their Silver Stick Regional tournament and are a legit top 10 team. We knew this was going to be a tight battle and that's exactly what it was. The Colts have solid goaltending, quick dangerous forwards and are a well coached team. Our D came through limiting their chances, Jordie buried the eventual GWG and Brando made some key saves to earn us our 2nd straight 1-0 shutout victory. We had a feeling this wasn't the last time we would see the Colts and (spoiler alert) we were right.
Saturday afternoon's game was against a big, strong North Bay Trappers team that plays well, well above their #17 ranking (another one of the best teams we've seen this year). We dropped this game 1-0 which resulted in 5 teams ending the round-robin at 3-1. North Bay was eliminated on a tie breaker. As O-Dog stated that's karma but we won't go into details. Let's just say we now have added motivation to get to OHF's as the Trappers are hosting. Hope to see you in North Bay.
The semi-finals were set. Barrie vs Nickel City & LJK White vs Timmins. Another great team dinner organized at the hotel, birthday cake and Polish wodka for Mace, a carrot poker game and an early night for everyone as we had work to do in the morning.
Sunday's semi-final game vs Timmins was one of our toughest games of the year. It was 1-0 Timmins in the 3rd period and the time was ticking off the clock too quickly with many missed chances. We've seen this story before but Gager had the North Stars number this weekend scoring another clutch goal late in the game sending it to OT. Brando held us in the game making a huge stop and Woj buried the winner going hard to the net sending us to the championship game.
Barrie won their semi 3-2 setting us up for what we all knew would be a great final game. It's never easy playing the home team in a championship but our boys were on a mission this weekend. Gager came up with yet another huge goal on the PP giving us the lead in the 2nd period. Castrilli scored the important insurance goal in the 3rd giving us a little breathing room late in the game. We held on to the lead with relentless back-checking by our forwards, great defensive play and another shutout for Easton to take the championship game. A true complete team effort.
The following message was sent by friends on behalf of the Barrie Colts team:
"...please let your friends on the London team know that the coaches, players and fans are a class act and have a great hockey team. I believe there is alot of mutual respect between both teams after this weekend and both games were really well played".
Well I couldn't agree more and if anyone from the Barrie Colts team is reading this the feelings are definitely mutual. It was a very well run tournament and you were classy hosts.
I'm very proud of our team both on and off the ice. Now we know what it feels like and what it takes to be Champions. Let's use the lessons learned this weekend to go win the Alliance and earn our place in the OHF's.
Go Team White!
Coach Rich
