Joey Payeur
Jamie Davis went out of his way to add one more thought in the midst of the post-game glow filling the hallways of the Memorial Sports Centre on Sunday.
“Make sure to say we thank the community for coming out and supporting the boys,” the Muskie boys’ hockey head coach said.
“The crowd was incredible today.”
Graeme Kitt agreed wholeheartedly.
“It’s a privilege to be from such a hockey-based town,” the Muskie assistant captain lauded.
“For them to come out like that was a big deal for us.”
It was a well-deserved tribute to the crowd of roughly 500 people—the biggest, by far, for a Muskie game in recent memory—that watched Fort High claim its eighth-straight NorWOSSA championship at the Ice For Kids Arena.
The 7-3 victory over the Dryden Eagles in the third-and-deciding game gave the Muskies a 2-1 series victory and a 35th trip to the OFSAA ‘A/AA’ championships March 9-13 in Pembroke/Petawawa.
“We had to work for that one,” Davis admitted as he watched from centre ice as his team celebrated all around him after coming back from a 1-0 series deficit to end their NorWOSSA campaign with an overall record of 18-2—both losses coming at the hands of the now-vanquished Eagles.
“It’s a little more satisfying. It tests your character.
“Give credit to Dryden. They stuck with it until the end,” added Davis, who now has two NorWOSSA titles in his first two years as Muskie head coach.
“But we’ve got 16 players that play together,” he noted.
“There’s no other way to explain it. They all care about each other and it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.
“They play for each other,” Davis stressed.
Muskie forward Matt Cheetham, who had two goals and an assist in the first period of Sunday’s game, said their 6-1 victory in Game 2 in Dryden on Thursday night turned the team’s fortunes around.
“We got our confidence back after the first game,” said Cheetham, referring to the Muskies’ 3-1 defeat in Game 1 here back on Feb. 23.
“It was back and forth but we came out with the result we wanted.
“We believed in ourselves—it was do-or-die,” he added.
“We didn’t want our season to be over.”
Muskie captain Carter Brown now has celebrated three NorWOSSA titles and it’s not getting old.
“I’m ecstatic, it’s a totally surreal feeling,” he grinned.
“I’m excited for the team and for the parents, who put a lot of time in to help make this happen,” Brown remarked.
“I don’t think we had to battle more than last year,” he added. “There’s better competition in the league this year.
“Props to Dryden. We just wanted it a little more than they did.”
The Eagles made the surprise decision to start William Chukru in goal Sunday after Brady Desserre had backstopped Dryden to the Game 1 victory, though he also took the loss in Game 2.
Jarred Taylor made Eagles’ head coach Darryl Mousseau have early regrets on his choice when Taylor’s attempted pass to Chase McGuire from the right-wing boards found its way through Chukru less than three minutes into the game.
“It was luck of the draw,” Taylor smiled.
“We knew we could outskate them, but it was just a matter of getting traffic to the front of the net,” he added.
“We knew we could score if we took away [the goalie’s] view of the puck.”
Just seven seconds later, Tyler VanUden swooped in on a sudden 2-on-1. He hit Cheetham on the fly, who made no mistake in putting the puck past Chukru.
Mousseau called his time-out but the Eagles couldn’t stem the tide.
A second after a Dryden penalty expired, Cheetham redirected Spencer Shortreed’s point shot behind Chukru for a 3-0 lead.
Matt Pitchenese put the visitors on the board later in the first when he walked out of the corner and beat Jordan Carlson high to the glove side.
But the bounces went Fort High’s way again when Cheetham’s pass hit a skate and found itself in the flight path of Kitt, who hammered the puck in supersonic fashion to the open side of the net.
“I didn’t want to miss that one,” grinned Kitt, who also had two assists in the game.
Taylor added his second of the game early in the middle frame, using his speed to cut to the net and then knock home his own rebound.
Then just over a minute later, Mike Drouin put the puck right in VanUden’s wheelhouse—and the veteran forward cut loose with a one-timed howitzer from 30 feet that Chukru barely flinched on to make it 6-1.
Mousseau gave Chukru the hook at that point in favour of Desserre and that seemed to fire up the Eagles, who promptly got a power-play goal by Graham Oliphant and a short-handed tally off a 2-on-0 from Keith Wrolstad to pull within 6-3.
But Carlson came up with perhaps his biggest save of the game—turning away Pitchenese’s rebound chance from in tight with only four seconds on the clock.
Max Williams’ power-play shot from the point early in the third beat Desserre glove side to round out the scoring.
“It was good closure,” said Williams, who, along with the other Grade 12s on the team, played the last home game of their high school careers.
“It’s something that when you look back, you can be satisfied.”
Eight players on this year’s team were part of the squad that advanced to the OFSAA quarter-finals in Burlington/Oakville last year.
Carlson wasn’t one of those, but the netminder is brimming with optimism about the task that lies ahead.
“If we give it all we’ve got, we can win it, no problem,” he vowed.
The seedings and schedule for OFSAA will be announced later this week.
