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Grand Forks Peewee hockey team loses Tier 4 championship opener, plays Prince George today

The Grand Forks Peewee Bruins opened up the 2013 Peewee Tier 4 B.C. Hockey Championship with a hard-fought 3-2 loss to Kelowna.
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Grand Forks Peewee Bruins' goalie Kaeden Lane makes a save against Kelowna Sunday night.

The Grand Forks Peewee Bruins played tough in their 2013 Peewee Tier 4 B.C. Hockey Championship opener against the Kelowna Peewee Rockets on Sunday night – a 3-2 loss.

The Bruins jumped out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Nathan Jourdin and Malcolm Turner but surrendered three unanswered goals – Jourdin scored nine seconds into the first period.

According to Grand Forks’ head coach Darryl Turner, the team got the start it wanted but not the finish.

“We’ve been wanting to get ahead of this team. We played them twice this year earlier in the year and we hadn’t seen them for a while and we wanted to get a good start and get ahead and play with the lead and that’s exactly what we did. Nathan the last month has just been working his butt off and that was just a hard-work goal. It bounced off his shins and he buried it,” Turner said.

The team took a number of penalties throughout the game and while it was able to kill some of Kelowna’s power play chances, the short-handed opportunities can aid the opposition, whether they score or not according to Turner.

“We’ve taken some penalties all year and I’ve been talking about understanding what the ref is going to give you and understanding what you can do in a game,” he said. “We killed a lot of penalties but momentum shifts as that team, even if you kill a penalties, if you get two or three or four and we kill them off, they still get that momentum and get some more confidence.”

Despite the loss Bruins’ goalie Kaeden Lane had a good game, making key saves, some of the acrobatic variety.

“We have the best goalie in the tournament here, he is fabulous and he’s a great goalie and you know what? We ride him and you can’t apologize for having a great goalie – he’s part of our team. We were outshot, but the shots were close, and he made some key saves, he kept us in it,” Turner said.

When asked about what lessons the Bruins could take from the opening loss, Turner said that all three goals against came from players blindly shooting the puck around the boards and he said the team needed to be calmer.

“We made the same mistake a few times and it cost us. We have to stay out of the penalty box and take a little more time to make that good outlet pass and then we’ll break out a little smoother,” explained the coach.

Sunday’s game ended about 10:30 p.m. and although schools in the district are on spring break, Turner said it would be a grind for his team until the tournament ends this Thursday.

“Our kids are going to go home and rest, we have a lot of fruit and fruit juices and stuff in between periods but they’re long games and it’s going to be a long five days,” he said. “It’s going to be a grind and I think our conditioning will start to pay off as the week goes on.”

Besides Grand Forks and Kelowna, teams from Vanderhoof, Prince George, Semiahmhoo, Juan de Fuca, and Windermere Valley are taking part in this round robin championship.

Grand Forks plays Prince George Monday afternoon and Windermere Valley on Tuesday morning.

It will play Semiahmoo on Tuesday afternoon as well.

The locals will play Vanderhoof Wednesday at 8 p.m. and Juan de Fuca on Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m.

The championship will go 8 p.m. Thursday night with the top two teams vying for the title.

Admission is $5 for the day or $20 for a family pass for the week.

For up-to-date results, go here.

For a schedule, go here.



Karl Yu

About the Author: Karl Yu

After interning at Vancouver Metro free daily newspaper, I joined Black Press in 2010.
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