Written by Ron Pryce
The Minor Peewees competed well in the AAA Elite division at the Chicago Bauer Invitational tournament last weekend. They started out with a tough match against Team Illinois losing 3–1. Lone goal scorer for the Lakers was Mason Weber from Blake Wideman. Hardy Westman made some great saves as he was kept busy in net.
In the 2nd game the boys faced off against the Green Bay Jr’s. This game would turn out to be a cake walk for the Lakers winning 10–1. Sheldon Pryce opened the scoring from Blake Wideman, followed by Eric Roes from Pryce. At the end of the 1st the match was 2–1 Lakers. The boys took control of the game in the 2nd getting pucks to the net, Kaden Hoggarth knocked home a rebound from a Callan Ferguson point shot; Zac McCann jumps on a lose puck and feeds Tyler Hotson who finds the twine with Wideman grabbing an assist. Then Kayden Schooley to Roes for the shot with Pryce knocking home the rebound to take a commanding 5–1 lead. Then to round out the scoring in the 2nd , Tate Gaylor gets the puck out of the zone to Schooley who would go the rest of the way and score to give the Lakers a 6–1 lead at the end of 2 periods. Starting off the 3rd period goal scoring was Coleson Fischer steeling the puck at his own blue line, feeding Schooley who went all the way again for his 2nd . Then Pryce from behind his own net hit Schooley at the side boards who went coast to coast again for the hat trick! Hoggarth would score the 9th Laker goal on a feed from Mason Weber , and grabbing the last goal was Hotson on another nice feed from McCann and Connor Aarts. Dylan Kints shut the door in the Laker net, essentially a shutout as the lone goal for Green Bay was a tough bounce off our own player. Great solid effort by the whole Laker team!
On day 2 the boys would have some work to do to stay in the top 4. Facing off against Honey Baked in game 3 would be quite a back and forth match. At 4:21 of the 1st , Honey Baked would score, then at 1:15 McCann would tie the game assisted by Dakota Coultes . 20 seconds later Honey Baked scored again to end the 1st period. At 14:31 of the 2nd , Weber would score on a rebound after a good hard shot from Hoggarth, ties the match at 2. At 10:50 Honey Baked strikes again but the Lakers answered 4 minutes later on a goal by Schooley assisted by Pryce and Coultes to tie the game at 3. Honey Baked would then score again at 6:21. Once again the Lakers responded and scored again at 5:39 on a goal by Weber, assisted by Hoggarth and Blake Boreham to tie the game at 4. With 1:26 left in the 2nd the Lakers would grab their 1st lead of the game with some beauty passing, McCann would pass to Pryce at the blue line, Pryce taking it into bottom of the circle where he hit Hotson in front who deeked the goalie and scored making the match 5 – 4 Lakers at the end of the 2nd. Honey Baked would not go away though tying the game at 5 early in the 3rd . Then with 6 minutes left the Lakers went to work again with another nice pass from McCann to Ferguson pinching in from the point and let a bullet shot go scoring top cheese for his 1st goal as a Laker! Then at 3:03 the Lakers would gain a 2 goal lead when Pryce hit Wideman with a pass in the neutral zone, Wideman would go the rest of the way scoring to give the Lakers a 7–5 lead and final score.
This win would give the boys a 2nd place finish in their pool and would now face off against the Peterborough Petes in the play-off round. This game was all Petes and by the end of the 2nd the Lakers were down 3–0. Finally at 8:16 of the 3rd McCann would find the back of the net assisted by Hotson and Jack Robinson. With the game 3–1 and 2 minutes left, goalie pulled, the Petes would score an empty netter to go ahead 4–1. With 1 minute left Schooley would score for the Lakers assisted by Pryce and Roes, to make it 4–2 but the clock ran out as the Lakers were trying to put a come back together.
This would knock the boys out of the tourney. A great weekend of hockey and team bonding for the boys who now have a tough road ahead playing some of the top teams in the league over the next few weeks .
Good Luck Lakers !