A busy first week of May saw the U13 and U15 AAA Atlantic’s take place in PEI and Nova Scotia respectively, capping the 2022 AAA Atlantic’s season. We also saw the second instalment of HPP camps, with the U16 and U18 females hitting the ice after the males rocked and rolled on the milky sheet last weekend. Without further adieu, lets roll up our sleeves and analyze!
The Tri-Com U13 AAA Thunder are the best U13 AAA team in NL history. Some people will scoff at this statement, but how many teams can you think of that only lost 1 game in a season? How many teams only trailed in one game in a season? How many teams have gone 22 games without a regulation loss? Some may argue that this was a COVID-19-shortened season and the Thunder only played 5 tournaments (October in Placentia, November in Springdale, December in Rocky Harbour, Provincials in Bay Roberts, Atlantics in PEI)… but lets go and look at the dominance in more detail:
2022-23 Regular Season (12 games) Record 11-0-1 (1 tie with the Hitmen, had to get that in there). 112 Goals For (Probably more but often the scores were not kept past a certain number), 11 against. That’s a +/- of a +101 in 12 games. On average, this would mean that Tri-Com beat their opponents by a shade more than 8 goals per game.
2022-23 Provincials (5 games) Record 5-0, 41 Goals For with 2 against. 2 goals against on the small ice surface @ Bay Arena. Are you kidding?
2022-23 Atlantic’s (5 games) +20 goal differential in 4 round robin games. Averaged over 6 goals per game @ the Atlantic’s… the best teams in Atlantic Canada couldn’t slow this chuckwagon down.
So to put it all together… 22 Games Played. 20-0-2 record. Over 175 goals for. A +/- of over 150. You could even dig a little deeper to see if TriCom scored more goals than shows allowed on their net this season. That is how dominant this U13 AAA Thunder team was.
Congratulations to the TriCom Thunder on their Atlantic Championship, and to the five (5) players from the team who attended at least 1 hour of programming with us in 2022-23 (Hutch, G-Man, Gav, Jewer, Bird Man)!
An amazing turnout for HNL’s U16 Female HPP Program. Over 100 girls came out for Hockey NL’s High Performance Spring Camp May 6-8 in Paradise, which is a new provincial record. The overall depth of this U16 Female team will be tested this year, as the NL U18 team is allowed to pluck players from U16 as they see fit. However, other provinces will likely have the same issues (losing stud young players to Canada Games) and – in the case of U16 female here in NL – (potentially) creates opportunities in goal. This age division is absolutely loaded between the pipes, which is a testament to the goalie development here in NL (Jewer, Benda, Keats, Clarke et al). Hockey NL will release their main camp lists here
Great job by the U13 and U15 Atlantic’s co-ordinators for offering free video streams for the events. The feeds were easy to follow, clear, with good announcers. The ‘instant replay’ at the U13 AAA Atlantic’s was a nice feature.
Ty Peddigrew and Mason Strong lit it up @ U15 AAA Atlantic’s. We have wrote about these guys before – click to see article here – both lit the Q Plex ablaze this weekend. Peddigrew and Strong finished in the top-5 in tournament scoring, combining for 12 points in 4 games. Strong’s two-way game has been praised by some important people who are watching in the bleachers in Southern NB. I’d be surprised if both players don’t have busy phones come next week. Side note – are you a scout and want to see Peddigrew play again this coming weekend? Pop down to the UNIPlex in Dieppe, NB for the ’07 Beast of the East Showcase put off by Andrews Hockey Growth! Tournament Web site here and the VHG Beast of the East Tournament Headquarters click here
I’m sure there are a lot of people reading this article who are thinking that we will jump down the rabbit hole that was the Ella Meade HPP eligibility situation – but we will not. Lost in all the social media hoopla is this – Ella Meade is a good hockey player. A great 2009 hockey player in fact. Ella Meade will play high level hockey some day if she continues to develop like she is developing as a player. Everything else is out of our control at this point.
Until Next Time
The VHG Boys