Murphy’s Law weekend for Kootenay Ice
By The Nelson Daily Sports
It was a Murphy’s Law weekend for the Kootenay Ice.
That’s right, everything that could go wrong — including the refs not showing up for Saturday’s game — did to wrong.
The Valley West Hawks put some serious hurt on the Ice, dumping Kootenay by scores of 7-0 Saturday and 11-7 Sunday in BC Hockey Major Midget League action in Nelson.
“It started with officiating not scheduled properly,” Ice head coach Rob Wright said following Sunday’s loss.
“There was major delay . . .. When we got playing they jumped on us and we just never were able to get it back.”
“(Sunday) we played a lot better but we just gave them too many scoring opportunities and ran into a little panic mode,” Wright added.
Saturday’s game was rescheduled for later in the day when referees could be located.
Valley West took a 1-0 lead after one period then increased the margin to 4-0 after two frames.
Trevor Ayre scored twice to lead the Hawks.
Sunday, Valley West held period leads of 3-1 and 6-5 before blowing the game open by outscoring the Ice 5-2 — with five of the goals coming on the power play.
“We took some bad penalties,” Wright admitted.
“I don’t mind taking those hard-nosed penalties, I just don’t like penalties when we act up after a play.”
“We took a lot more penalties than they did but they did a lot of stuff behind the play that maybe wasn’t seen by the refs,” said Wright, choosing his words carefully when assessing the score sheet after the game.
Jeffery Stewart scored three goals to lead the Hawks while Ayre finished the game with five points.
Tanner Costa (Castlegar), before being ejected late in the game, led the Ice with three goals while Korbyn Chabot (Cranbrook), Ellis Junker (Castlegar), Aigne McGready-Bruce (Nelson) and Shawn Campbell (Castlegar), on a nice two-way passing play in the third, replied for Kootenay.
Solomon Burk (Castlegar) and Jason Mailhiot (Trail) shared the netminding duties for Kootenay.
“This weekend we were hoping to steal a point or two, but we’ve to go get ourselves ready for another strong team next weekend in Kelowna, and just play as hard as we can,” Wright explained.
The two wins kept Valley West tied for third in BCMMHL standings with Okanagan Rockets of Kelowna while Kootenay remains in ninth spot with a 2-6-0 record.
Next home date for Kootenay is November 1-2 in Trail at the Cominco Arena against league leading Cariboo Cougars.
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