Banff Hockey Tournament

The Renegades Hockey Team was in Banff this past weekend and played in a tournament.  I booked most of Friday off work, though  I did slip into the office briefly in the morning before hitting the road for the mountains.  Margarit and Annelise came along with me for the weekend.

We left the city shortly after lunch and arrived in Banff by about 4:30.  After checking into our hotel and dropping off our luggage, I had to head over to the rink.  The girls dropped me off there and then went on into town.  We only had twelve of our players signed up for the tournament so that made things a little challenging right from the start.  To make matters worse, we had to play twice on Friday night.

The first game was at 6:00PM against another team from Edmonton called the Jagr Bombs.  This was a fairly close game but we eventually fell behind and lost by a score of 6-2.  Immediately after that game we moved our gear to a different dressing room.  We had enough time to head upstairs to the lounge for a couple of beers and then head back down to the room to get dressed for a second game at 8:45PM.  This was against another Edmonton based team called the Pumas.  We should have been fairly well matched against these guys but they were fresh and we were worn out from the long drive and the previous game.  We got blown out of this one by a score of 6-0.

After the game Margarit and Anna came and picked me up.  We headed into town for a late dinner.  One of the only places that was open late, and allowed minors was a Mexican place called the Magpie and Stump.  It was pretty good and I was really hungry.  By the time we finished dinner I was exhausted.  It was all I could do to walk the six blocks back to our hotel, where we immediately crashed.

The next day we played a game at 12:15.  This one was against a team from Estevan, Saskatchewan called the Tri-City Chiefs.  This was a very closely matched game and lot of fun to play.  We managed to hang on for a 6-5 victory.  The top two teams in our division of four played in a championship game on Sunday morning.  We didn't make it to that game but I understand that the Jagr Bombs beat the Chiefs 8-1.

On Saturday, and again on Sunday morning the girls and I wandered around town.  We checked out the Christmas market and some of the shops and galleries.  We couldn't really join the team at the bars on Saturday night as we had Anna along with us, and didn't want to leave her alone in the hotel.  So we passed on that part of the weekend but really enjoyed ourselves all the same.