I signed up my hockey team, the Renegades, to play in the annual holiday tournament again this year. This is held at the River Cree Resort and Casino, on the west edge of the city. At the back of the hotel and casino, run by the Enoch Cree Nation, is an arena with two rinks. They run a recreational hockey league here, and every holiday they sponsor a tournament. It usually attracts quite a few teams, with a pretty high skill level.
For an entry fee of $500 we were guaranteed to play in at least four games. There is an elite division and a recreational division, with a $6000 prize for first place in each division. This attracts some pretty good teams, most with a much higher skill level than ours. Some native teams usually travel to the casino for this tournament from reserves around the central part of the province. These teams are generally big, fast, skilled, and rough.
It turned out that only eight players from our team were able to play. The rest of the guys were either working, or away for the holidays. So I pulled together a bunch of other players from another team that I knew, and friends and spares. We had a mish-mash assortment of players, of varied ages and skill levels, most of whom had not played together before. Needless to say we didn't have much chance of advancing.
Our first game was on December 27th at 1:15 in the afternoon and we played a team called the Ducks. These guys were young, fast and skilled and had obviously been playing together for quite a while. The tournament games are two periods of 25 minute run time, with minor penalties of 3 minutes. Teams are guaranteed to play the full first period but after that, as soon as there is a seven goal differential, the mercy rule kicks in and the game ends. We made it a few minutes into the second period before the Ducks scored their 7th goal and the game came to an end. Later we learned that the Ducks played their first two games with some ineligible players so our team, and one other, were awarded a default win of 1-0.
Our second game was on December 28th at 2:30 in the afternoon against a team called the Heart Lake Tribe. These guys were pretty good too, but we were beginning to get used to playing with each other and the game was a little closer. We played the full two periods but lost by a score of 8-2. At least the mercy rule didn't have to kick in for this one.
Later that night at 10:00 in the evening we played our third game of the round robin. This was against a team called the Moose Knuckles. This was a close, hard fought battle against a team that was younger and faster than most of our guys. But we put up a good fight and kept things close. Late in the game we were down by two goals but put on a big push at the end. With only 100 seconds left in the game, we scored once, then pulled our goalie for an extra attacker and scored a second time in the dying seconds, to tie 6-6. There was no shootout or overtime during the round robin so the game remained a tie. We finished the round robin in 13th place out of 24 teams in the recreational division.
On December 29th at 1:15 in the afternoon we played our first playoff game. The playoffs were sudden death... if you win, you advanced and if you lost you were done. We played a native team from the Enoch reserve called Al's Pals. They were a big, skilled team that were well organised and had obviously been playing together for a while. We jumped out to an early lead with the first couple of goals but then they turned it up a notch and buried us. Their team was so big compared to us, and we had three girls on our team, the only girls in the entire tournament. I think I am one of the biggest guys on our team at 6'-0" and about 195 Lbs and I was small compared to these guys. The officials chose not to call any penalties so we just got overpowered and manhandled and eventually lost the game by a 6-3 score.
But, the tournament was a lot of fun and all of our players really enjoyed it. We entered it with the intention of playing some cheap hockey, having fun, and getting some exercise. We achieved that goal and met some new players and made some new friends. After being eliminated we headed over to the lounge in the casino and used up the $150 in coupons that we had been given and won during the tournament on a few pitchers of beer and some snacks. I expect that we will do this all over again next year and I think that the higher level of play will help the guys from our team to be ready when our regular season starts back up again in a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment