Midget — The weather held off nicely for the Sooke midget rep Thunderbird’s road trip to Port Hardy this past weekend.
With Sooke shorthanded for most of the first period, Saturday’s game found Nick Dueck active in net. Ryan Seeburger opened the scoring that period with assists from Trevor Wickheim and Braden Swaile.
In the second period, Port threatened with a goal but Nick Pfeifer answered quickly with the help of Jared Pleasants. Linden White and Braden Swaile assisted Ryan Seeburger for another goal for Sooke, but Port Hardy responded with one of their own making it 3-3 after two periods.
Already running a short bench for the trip, a couple of Sooke’s forwards found themselves on the pine in the second due to injury, but the team kept their cool and an unassisted goal from Tom Kirk in the third found them up 4-3. The team managed to keep their legs and once again Tom found himself down ice and potted a fifth goal for Sooke. Port Hardy answered with another goal, and pressured to even things up, but Jared Pleasants, fresh off the bench from icing his knee, went north to south and finished off the game with the final deciding goal of the game making it 6-4 Sooke.
Sunday’s game found Sooke once again dealing with penalty minutes in the first period and Port Hardy opened up the scoring with two goals. Brendan David, Linden White and Alfred Nelson were kept busy on defence as Nick Nueck kept things alive facing a barrage of shots. In the second period Nick Pfiefer found the back of the net with a nice wrister and an assist from Tom Kirk. Port Hardy kept pressing and they put in another goal in the second making it 3-1. Later, a feed from Ryan Elder found Tom Kirk’s stick then past the Port goalie bringing Sooke within one. With 1:50 left, Sooke gave Nick some well deserved rest out of goal, but were unable to even things up. Sooke 2, Port Hardy 3.
Atom (development) — After a successful preseason, the Atom Development Team won their first league game against JDF B this past Saturday.
Sooke’s Matthew Clark was first to score with an unassisted goal with 8:55 on the clock. Later in the period, a goal by Kaleb McHugh, assisted by Chris Piatkowski, gave Sooke a two-point lead going into the second.
Gaining some momentum, JDF scored within minutes of the start of the period and rallied hard for the remainder, scoring twice and taking the lead going into the third. The score was now 3-2 for JDF. Within minutes, Sooke’s Kaleb McHugh, assisted by Matthew Clark, tied the game and both teams fought hard for the tie-breaking goal.
With 11:09 remaining in the third, JDF scored and inched ahead for the second time. Sooke rallied hard to catch up, but was unable to even the score until two quick goals, seconds apart, put Sooke in the lead with three minutes remaining.
JDF, startled by the quick come back, was unable to catch up before the buzzer and Sooke won their first league game 5-4.
Peewee (girls) — No game this weekend, but the coaching staff would like to congratulate their new captain for the 2011/12 season Victoria Sutherland and her three assistants Morgan Couture, Alyssa Lloyd and Rory Wood.
