Given another crack at the Langley LY6 Ice Dawgz, the Langley LY3 Eagles made the most of their second chance.
Two games earlier, the Ice Dawgz won 1-0 to advance straight to the finals of the Langley Bantam Cup.
The Eagles, meanwhile, faced a must-win game in the double knockout format. And they delivered, defeating Langley LY6 by a 4-2 score to get one more chance at the Ice Dawgz and the Cup.
And it was a different story the second time around with the Eagles soaring to the Cup victory thanks to a 2-0 victory on Sunday at the George Preston Recreation Centre.
Greg Song opened the scoring late in the second period and Trevor Young doubled the lead in the final minute before intermission. Both goals were set up by Colten Kenney.
And that was more than enough offence for the Eagles as Matthew Reeves picked up the shutout.
In fact, over the team’s five games at the Langley Cup, they only allowed a combined four goals — they won their opener 5-0, took game two 3-1, lost 1-0 to the Ice Dawgz and then bounced back with the 4-2 win to stay alive and closed things with the 2-0 shutout in the final.
“We have a really strong defence corps,” said coach Clark Kemp. “(And) a good defence leads to good offence; that is what we practice.”
As for what changed between their two meetings, Kemp said his team was ready for the Ice Dawgz in Sunday’s final.
“They clogged up the neutral zone on us and that kind of confused our guys,” Kemp said. “So for the next game, we knew what we had to do, which was get the puck in deep, get in and attack.
“We set the pace ourselves and everything fell into place.”
The victory capped off a great season for the Eagles who also won all three tournaments they entered, as well as capturing the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association banner as the Fraser Valley West playoff champs for the bantam C division.
Overall, the team finished with a 39-6-4 record.
The Eagles players are: Matthew Reeves, Matt Bardell-Polley, Nickolas Cormack, Joseph Deley, Owen Kemp, Colten Kenney, Owen Kredba, Josh Laird, Brady Lumsden, Josh Moreau, Eric Nordal, Lex Rohweder, Greg Song, Carson Yee and Trevor Young.
The coaches are Clark Kemp and Jim Kenney. Lars Nordal is the manager and Dave Polley is the team’s HCSP.
