Jamie Mountain
It all started out so well for the Fort Frances Canadians.
Noah McPherson scored on a clear-cut breakaway just 3:47 into the opening period to put the Canadians up 1-0 on the Neebing Hawks in Sunday’s final of the Fort Frances Minor Hockey Association’s annual PeeWee ‘AA’ tournament.
But there was just one little problem–the Hawks are a pretty good team, too.
They proved that by scoring three unanswered goals en route to a 3-1 triumph to claim the gold medal.
Andrew Bagnalo knotted the game at 4:49 of the second period with a breakaway beauty of his own, snapping a shot top-shelf over Canadians’ goalie Brayton Levesque.
Noah Power then gave Neebing a 2-1 lead at 8:35, with Brock MacKenzie drawing the assist.
Try as they might, the Canadians just couldn’t net the equalizer in the third period.
Power then capped the scoring with his second of the game at 4:28 to seal the victory.
The Canadians edged the Fort Garry Twins (Winnipeg) 3-2 in the semi-finals Sunday morning to set up a showdown with Neebing.
Emerson Evans scored twice in that one while McPherson notched the other goal.
Fort Frances opened the tournament Friday with a narrow 2-1 win over International Falls.
Bo Gartzke and Royce Allan provided the offence while Maxwell Dremmel replied for the Falls.
The Canadians then used a four-goal first period to dump Fort Garry 6-1 later Friday for their largest margin of victory in the tournament.
Ashton Veldhuisen and Jack Davis each had power-play goals in the outburst, with Evan Kabel and Dylan Tessier also scoring.
Gartzke (power play) and McPherson added second-period tallies to cap the scoring for Fort Frances.
Then in Saturday’s action, the Canadians battled the Hawks to a 1-1 tie.
McPherson scored the lone goal for the Fort at 9:46 of the second period before Nolen Sloan tied it in the third.
The Canadians then earned a 2-2 tie with the Dryden Paper Kings.
Dryden opened the scoring 9:58 into the opening frame off the stick of Jade Windego Jr.
Landon Lowes then knotted it 1-1 just over five minutes into the second.
Klyde LaPlante put Fort Frances ahead 2-1 at 11:01 of the final frame before Carter Deschamps evened things again at 14:07.
The Canadians then wrapped up the day up with a 4-1 win over the Kenora Thistles to finish with three wins and two ties to earn the top seed going into the playoff round.
Teagan Wrolstad scored twice in that one while Tessier and Gartzke added singles.
The FFMHA next will host its annual Atom ‘A’ tournament this Friday through Sunday.
