Dirty dancing? Patrick Swayze? Naw.
Dirty driving? Yes. A great way to describe my drive to Bay Roberts on Saturday morning. As I scraped the 1/4” of ice off my windshield, I had mega buyers remorse and wished I was on the Legacy Trail in Sarasota, cruising up and down on a pair of skates with wheels on the bottom. Hockey first, fantasize about warm climate later. Here goes.
*** I absolutely love the Junior Women’s Hockey League. First of all, the league is competitive as hell so a lot of important eyeballs are on it. Second, it has great events like the U19 Challenge Cup which is going on right now in Washington, D.C . The league’s YouTube stream is high-quality. The league puts off events @ Minnesota (on campus, playing at U of Minnesota’s home rink), Brown University, etc. The PWHL on the north side of the US-Canada border gets a lot of love from scouts, and rightly so. Great U22 league. But the JWHL deserves a lot of respect and is on the up’n’up.
*** The Western Warriors Female program has improved. In U13AAA, the Warriors are in second place by a wide margin and took the 15-0 Eastern Ice Breakers to the limit yesterday (was 2-2 until late in the 3rd period). In U15AAA, the orange and blacks are 10-3-2 and knocking on the Provincial Crown’s door heading into the ‘big weekend’. With Steers Insurance coming on board as a major sponsor and people putting in work behind the scenes, the Warriors look more professional on the ice with matching pant shells, matching everything.
*** The Eastern Ice Breakers right winger Athena Wilson (’11 b.y) has a unique blend of skating and skills. A name to stash away for those of you hockey prognosticators. That said, it was not the Wilson line that made the biggest difference for Eastern vs Western on Saturday morning. It was the line of Ailee Young, Lydia Evans and Aubree Bartlett who were consistently putting pressure on the Warriors defence and creating havoc in the offensive zone. In a rink as small as the Bay Arena, effectiveness is often accomplished with elbow grease and desire.
*** The Bay Arena was not built yesterday, but it is kept in pristine condition. If I dropped a french fry on the ground at the Bay Arena, I’d contemplate a 7 second rule vs a 5 second rule.
*** Team NL have arrived at the Canada Winter Games in PEI and open the round robin portion of their schedule today at 430 pm against Team Nunavut. We have an online headquarters established – click here for rosters, results, and more articles written/published by some of the top scouts in the industry . Good luck to all players!
*** The Paradise U15A Warriors roared through their competition at the Can-Am tournament in Montreal this weekend, going 3-0 in the round robin and are set to play the finals this morning. Good luck to the Warriors! Tournament web site here . Multiple players from this team attend our Small Group Skills Training program.