The 2023 Hay River Rec Hockey Tournament is in the books and it’s a team from the Yk Rec Hockey League that skated off with the big prize in the A division.
And they’re mighty glad they won when they did because they were literally running on fumes by the time the final siren sounded at the Aurora Ford Arena.
Ace captured the crown by beating Fuel Flo in the championship contest by a score of 5-3 on Sunday evening. The win capped off a near-perfect weekend for Ace and was a measure of revenge from the round-robin meeting between the two teams, which Fuel Flo won, 6-5.
Curtis German, Ace’s assistant captain, said every game throughout was competitive.
“All of the teams we played were really good and we had a bit of luck in all of our games,” he said.
The A division featured five teams: three from Yellowknife and two from Hay River; the Carl’s U18 Wolfpack was the other Yellowknife squad. Ace started off against the MSS Medicine Men from Hay River on Nov. 17 and won their opening contest.
Both teams ended up winning their semifinals on Sunday afternoon to advance to the final but in a short format tournament, the teams in the final didn’t exactly hit the ice with a full tank. Fuel Flo was no doubt a tired bunch as they were playing in its third game of the day, while Ace had its own problems.
“Tye Hand, our captain, had a badly swollen hand, Matt Hart had one of his skates break and Trent Dundas went down with a stomach bug,” said German.
Ace got the jump on Fuel Flo to take a 4-1 lead at the end of the second period, but Fuel Flo managed to cut that deficit down to 4-3 with around 90 seconds left in regulation. An empty-netter late for Ace managed to take the pressure off and give Ace the title.
“We’ve had great battles with those guys over the years and we’re just lucky we were on the right end of it this time around,” said German. “Those guys were playing their third game and all of us know how tough it can be to get those legs going in a final after that much hockey. We had a bit of luck and you need luck sometimes to win. We played four games in less than 48 hours ourselves.”
Had the game gone on any longer, German added, he doesn’t know if they would have been able to hold on.
This was the first tournament of the season for Ace and German said there wasn’t any trouble motivating the team to get up for this one.
“Hay River always does a great job organizing and the community always comes out to support it — they pack the barn and it’s a great atmosphere,” he said.
Both teams are getting back down to business in Yellowknife for the rest of the season and the goal now is to work toward the Easter tournament … if there’s one to be held this season, that is. There hasn’t been one since 2019 but the enthusiasm is there.
“Hopefully, it happens because we all miss it,” said German. “That’s always the big one and I know Dan (Schofield) and Dave (Earle) did a great job organizing it. I’m sure there’s some people who would help get it back up and running.”