Lucas Punkari
With parents, family members, and fans of both teams being whipped into a frenzy by what was taking place on the ice, it was hard to know just who would come away with the FFMHA’s Bantam ‘A’ tournament title Sunday afternoon at the Ice For Kids Arena between the Emo Fury and the hometown Canadian Tire Sabres.
When the dust finally settled, it was the Fury who came away with the crown, staging a third-period comeback to earn a 2-1 victory.
“It feels really good right now,” Fury head coach Dwayne Pelepetz smiled after the game.
“It was an exciting game, and to come back from being down a goal to winning made this one extra special,” he added.
The game was scoreless until just past the midway point of the second period when Andrew Pinsent’s shot hit the twine to give the Sabres the lead.
But just seconds after a power play had expired early in the third, Tyler Hamm’s point shot made its way through traffic and into the net, which allowed the Fury to tie the score at 1-1.
“That was probably the biggest factor in us winning the game,” Pelepetz said.
“It was back and forth up until that point,” he noted. “But once we scored, things started to change for us, and the guys started to play a lot harder and we started to get things rolling.”
After numerous scoring chances were turned aside by Sabres’ goalie Tyson Pitkanen, the Fury netted the game-winning marker with just under a minute-and-a-half to go when Brandon Pelepetz batted home a feed from Matt Falloon.
“Both Matt and Brandon have been very good players for us this year,” Dwayne Pelepetz noted.
“We try to keep them together all of the time, along with our other lines that we have on our team, and so far they have been working well with each other out there,” he remarked.
Despite falling short in their home tournament, Sabres’ head coach Blaise Pinsent was very pleased with his team’s performance over the weekend.
“I thought that they played an excellent tournament,” he lauded.
“They had to climb a lot of hills to get to this point, as we are a short team with only 10 skaters and a goalie that went up against a lot of larger lineups,” Pinsent noted.
“The guys worked hard and gave everything that they had right to the very last minute, and you don’t get that every day,” he stressed.
Earlier Sunday, Owen Doerkson netted a pair of third-period goals to help the Kenora Forest Flyers take a 4-2 victory over the Dryden Flyers in the ‘B’ final.
And in all-Fort Frances affair in the ‘C’ final, Jeremy Shypit scored with just seven seconds to go to give the Kennedy K9’s a dramatic 3-2 victory over the Holmlund Leafs.
Matt Cheetham and Damon Smith also scored for the K9’s while AJ Revus notched both goals for the Leafs.
Tournament play will continue here this weekend when the FFMHA hosts its annual Atom ‘A’ tournament at the Memorial Sports Centre, with teams from Fort Frances, Dryden, Kenora, Thunder Bay, and International Falls taking part.
Action will run Friday and Saturday, with the ‘A’ final set for 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.
