Nov 28, 2016 | Tyard | 707 views
Silver Stick Weekend.
The Progressive Waste Solution Midget Bears travelled to Midland this past weekend to play in the historic Silver Stick Regional Tournament.
The team has been developing and progressing well in the last month. The Silver Stick usually means stiff competition and there is no forgiveness in the schedule. If you lose a round-robin game you will be eliminated.
The Bears began well, winning their first two games. They were solid wins. Special thanks to Zach Anderson who stepped up from the AE team to help in the 1st game and Ty Robson in the second. Both were important to our winning cause! For our 3rd game we played Niagara On The Lake who was also undefeated so far. We needed to win or tie to advance. Unfortunately we had no AP's who were committed to their own tourney so we went with a depleted line up of only 11 healthy skaters. To make it appear to the opposition that we had more, the coaches employed a creative idea where injured captain Nate Lyndon was dressed so it looked like we had a fuller bench and though he wouldn't play, it was possible for him to serve any 'bench-minors' that occurred. Such a penalty didn't happen but it would have saved a healthy player for penalty killing instead of sitting in the box! It should also be said that Nate's leadership was a big asset to the tired troops on the bench!
This 3rd game began badly and it looked grim for the Bears when they went down 2-0 within the 1st minute of play. True to form however, they didn't quit, fighting back to tie and then go ahead 3-2! Tired players make mistakes and unfortunately some mistakes in the form of penalties were very costly. Killing penalties saps energy and when behind in the score, takes important minutes off the clock. The Niagara team took advantage and scored the next two to go ahead 4-3. A good effort was made when finally back to even strength and we also pulled our goalie for the extra man, but it wasn't quite enough. The 4-3 loss narrowly eliminated the Bears from what was a very attainable wild-card spot in the semi final.
Looking ahead the team expects to get all the players back healthy that were missing from our line-up. In the meantime, it's a great chance for others who will be getting more responsibility, to step up and improve their game. In theory, this should help everyone be better prepared when play downs start in January.