Peewee Chinooks host their 2014 tournament

2014/15 Peewee Chinooks
J. Jackson photo

Joey Jackson

Pincher Creek's Peewee Chinooks hosted a hockey tournament last weekend at the MCC arena. Participating teams included the Chinooks, Innisfail Flyers, Okotoks Oilers, Claresholm Thunder, and Fort Macleod Mavericks participating in a total of 12 games. The Chinooks were able to make it to the Bronze medal game but lost to the Innisfail Flyers 3-1 in a hard fought contest that almost saw Pincher send it to overtime with a late game offensive burst. The Chinooks ended the tournament 1-4 with two losses coming from Innisfail, one from the Fort Macleod Mavericks and one from the Claresholm Thunder.  All were very close games for the Chinooks. Their win came against the Okotoks Oilers, who they defeated 9-4. The Chinooks had different goal scorers for each of their 9.

Assistant Captain Nelz Vance and Captain Trinity Tanner both had strong games against Okotoks and both games against Innisfail, leading their team in points. Wes Krampe was in net for all of the Chinooks games, keeping all of them very close to give his team a chance to win.

Head coach Kayne Evans of the Chinooks said at the end of the tournament “ These are tougher teams that we're playing, but now they (the Chinooks) know where they have to be at and how they need to improve”

“I'm still very proud of the way they played.”

Not all coaches were particularly happy at the end of the tournament.  In the gold medal game, with only 5 minutes left, the refs had to eject Claresholm’s head coach from the game and one of his players for arguing with the ref and an illegal hit to the head.

The big winners were the Fort Macleod Mavericks who ended the tournament with 1st place and gold medals. They faced the Claresholm Thunder and defeated them by a score of  4-2. Greg Burrows scored the game and tournament winning goal for the Mavericks at 5:51 in the third period.  Maverick Graeden Woodward also scored a minute later to add an insurance marker to seal the win.  Of interest, Mavericks head coach Brandon Yellow Wings was the Peewee Chinooks coach last season, and there were also some familiar ex-Chinooks names on the Mavericks' roster.

Pincher's regular season starts up again this Friday December 19 when they face off against Crowsnest Pass at MCC, starting at 8:00 pm, when they hope to apply all that they learned from their tournament to get the upper hand against their regular rivals.  The Peewee Chinook game originally schedule for Saturday December 20 has been cancelled.

Coach Evans expressed his appreciation to Tammy Thompson-Fitzpatrick for all her hard work and organizing of the tournament, the parents for all their hard work in the concession, time box, and 50/50 selling, and Traci Carlson-Deley and her raffle table crew.

2014/15 Pincher Creek Peewee Chinooks

#1 Wes Krampe

#2 Easton Fitzpatrick

#3 Christian Berthiaume

#4 Connor Stuckey

#5 Logan Deley

#8 Caleb Evans

#9 Cade Ames

#11 Tristen Blood

#12 Nico Charette

#13 William Johnson Jr.

#14 Michael Kleinhans

#15 Trinity Tanner

#20 Nelz Vance

#26 Brayden Scotton

Head Coach Kayne Evans

Assistant Coaches Sean Stuckey, Jeremy Ames, Jode Deley

*corrected for accuracy