It’s when championships are on the line that the great teams separate themselves from the good teams.
This weekend at the provincial competition in Coronation, it will be the bantam Athabasca ‘AA’ Hawks who will set out to prove that they have the stuff of greatness.
To do so, however, they will have to rise above recent history.
The team suffered a disappointment when they lost to Edson in the finals of the Sturgeon Pembina Hockey League playoffs. Though they finished well ahead of Edson in the regular season and appeared to be the favorite going into the series, they lost two straight games to bow out, culminating with a loss on home ice last Friday.
“Edson deserved to win and we deserved to lose. They outworked us,” said head coach Calvin Klaczek. “We kept making the same mistakes and we didn’t fix them. They took advantage of that.”
In the championship series, the Hawks were unable to produce the kind of dominant play that brought them to the top of the league standings during the regular season. They won 13 of their 15 games this season, losing one and tying another. They victimized enemy goaltenders for 72 goals while surrendering only 27 themselves.
Those kinds of stats reveal a team that is capable of outclassing their opponents and dominating hockey games. And that’s the kind of play they will need to rediscover in order to have any measure of success in Coronation.
“We have to play solid, all 60 minutes,” said the coach. “We have to get back to the game we played all season.”
The bright side to the loss in the league finals, if one can be found, is that the Hawks know they can do better than they did against Edson. And hopefully the memory of that disappointment will be fresh enough in their minds that they will make a point of avenging the loss this weekend.
“It would have been nice to win the league. Hopefully that will motivate them even more to come out with a good, solid effort,” said Klaczek. “They can use it as a learning experience. Sometimes you need to lose before you can learn to win.”
Though the Hawks may have stumbled down the stretch, they are still a formidable team that any provincial competitor would be unwise to underestimate. Their lineup boasts the impressive offensive abilities of players like Ryan Runcer (28 goals, nine assists), Tyler Young (17 goals, 12 assists) and Tanner Richards (five goals, 13 assists), to name just a few.
They are also a notoriously stingy team on the defensive side of the puck. Goaltender Robbie Mason was the class of the SPHL this season with 13 wins, two shutouts, a .940 save percentage and a sparkling 1.80 goals against average.
So the bantam Hawks have what it takes to reach the top of the provincial mountain this weekend, if they can put it all together. But neither the head coach nor his players are under any illusions about the quality of the teams they are set to face.
They may have been able to take advantage of weaker opponents in the regular season, but that is unlikely to happen at provincials. This championship will go to the best of the best.
“You don’t make it to provincials by being a weak team,” said the coach. “All the teams will be really solid.”
In their first game, they will meet a familiar foe in the form of their nearby rivals, the Boyle Blazers. And there will be no rest for the weary as the Hawks will play two games on Friday followed by at least one on Saturday.
Teams that go all the way will have to play five games in three days.
But winning isn’t everything, and regardless of how they do this weekend, the local boys deserve recognition for what has been a great season.
“They deserve to be proud about (their season). But we’re always looking to climb a rung higher,” said Klaczek. “We’ll practice hard, work on some plays and hope for the best. It’d be nice to bring a medal back to the community.”
Athabasca is sure to be behind the local athletes as they make their attempt at provincial glory. And provincial medal or no, they will have made their community proud.
