Lucas Punkari
With the crowd cheering them on all weekend, there was no stopping the Fort Frances PeeWee ‘AA’ Canadians during their annual home tournament.
Leading the five-team field during the round-robin portion with a 3-1 record, the Canadians captured the title Sunday afternoon with a 3-1 victory over the International Falls Broncos.
“The kids are all excited right now, and they’ve been working hard over the last few tournaments,” Canadians’ head coach Brent Tookenay said afterwards.
“We had won a tournament in Dryden earlier this season [in November], but we just couldn’t get over the hump it seemed and win those key games,” he added.
“But on Saturday, we won our final round-robin game over Sioux Lookout and that seemed to get us going.”
Brett Hahkala led the way offensively in the final, firing three shots past Broncos’ goalie Jake Klow, with those goals coming thanks to great set-ups by linemate Chase McGuire.
“Chase is an amazing linemate and he moves the puck really well out there,” the 12-year old Hahkala said after the game.
“I think the biggest goal, though, out of the three was the first one I scored [with six minutes left in the first period] as it seemed to get us going and we just kept it up from there,” he added.
“Brett had three or four breakaways in our game against Sioux Lookout but he was unable to cash in on any of those chances,” Tookenay recalled.
“I told him to just keep going out there [because] if he started to worry about not scoring, he wasn’t going to be getting those chances,” he reasoned.
“He [Hahkala] dominates out there by using his feet and his size, and we saw that here today.”
Trailing by a pair of goals after the opening frame, Brock O’Loughlin cut the Broncos’ deficit to one on a power-play tally early in the third.
But Hahkala blasted a gorgeous one-timer a few minutes later to put the game out of each.
“We knew it was going to be a dogfight out there today,” remarked Broncos’ head coach Blake Peterson.
“Our kids came out and played really hard, and we had a much better effort here than we did in our round-robin game against them,” he noted.
“Overall, I’m happy with the effort but I just wish we had a couple more bounces go our way,” Peterson sighed.
The Canadians opened the tournament with two-straight wins Friday, doubling the Dryden Paper Kings 4-2 before downing the Broncos 5-2.
A chance at a perfect record fell by the wayside Saturday morning, however, as they fell 1-0 to the Thunder Bay Elks, setting the stage for a must-win showdown with the Sioux Lookout Jr. Flyers to earn a berth in Sunday’s final.
Despite falling behind 3-2 after the first period, the Canadians roared to life in the second by scoring four goals en route to a 7-3 victory and top spot in the round-robin.
“We didn’t do very good against Thunder Bay in burying our chances even though we did have some good opportunities,” Hahkala recalled.
“With Sioux [Lookout], we were both kind of running back and forth at the start of the game, but then we were able to bury them [our chances] and we pulled away.”
While the offence was a key part to their success, Tookenay was quick to laud the performance of goalie Parker Orchard in the win over the Flyers.
“He basically led the way for us,” Tookenay enthused.
“Sioux Lookout is a very dangerous team, and they have a couple of players that are on the district team, but he [Orchard] came through for us and we were able to then find a way to come away with the win.”
The Canadians now will enjoy a few weekends off before hitting road Feb. 3-5 for the Elks’ annual tournament in Thunder Bay.
