They’ve done it again!For the second year in a row the Panago Peewee A Tyees are Island Champions.Backed by the solid goaltending of Ethan Ouellette and Nick Ordano, the Tyees claimed the Vancouver Island Amateur Hockey Association’s Tier 2 title last weekend by sweeping the Juan de Fuca Grizzlies in two games straight.“This team has exceeded my expectations,” said head coach Paul Stapley. “I’m just so proud of them. I almost had a tear in my eye talking to them before the game today (Sunday).”Saturday at Rod Brind’Amour Arena Sage Lim, Dawson Frank, and Josh Coblenz tallied for Campbell River in a 3-2 win.The Tyees then wrapped it up with a convincing 5-1 triumph Sunday afternoon at Bear Mountain Arena in Victoria.  Matt Barker, Lim, Tyler Dickson, Frank and Brett Stapley scored in the victory.Stapley said the key to beating the Grizzlies was winning the physical battles.“Juan de Fuca is a fairly small, finesse team and we just had to be more aggressive than them.  But it was tight.  If we didn’t get good goaltending things could have easily gone their way,” said Stapley.It’s been a tumultuous season for the young Tyees, playing in the shadow of last year’s squad that only lost one game all year. They started slowly and were thrashed 8-1 by the Grizzlies in their first meeting back in November.  But according to Stapley the players bonded and showed steady improvement as the season went along.“We really came together as a team,” he said. “When one player fell down, a teammate was there to help him up. We’ve had different players pitching in at different times to make things happen and it really worked out well. (Sunday) for example, Nick Ordano had a great game in net, Tyler Dickson scored a fantastic goal and Marcellus Wilson made a key shot block.”According to team manager Victor Coblenz, the coaching staff of Stapley, Vince Devlin, Craig Schelter and Jim Ross also deserves a lot of credit.“This team includes seven first year players, including both goalies, and a couple of others that have never played ‘A’ rep hockey before,”  said Coblenz. “The coaches were able to combine them with the experienced second years and mould them together as a team.  You can see many of the new kids are playing with a huge amount of confidence now. For Vince (Devlin) and Paul (Stapley), this is two years in a row they have guided teams to Island Championships. It’s really an extraordinary achievement.”The Tyees will now attempt to repeat as BC Champions.  They travel to the Lower Mainland next month to represent Vancouver Island at the Tier 2 Provincials, which are set for March 20 to 25 in Aldergrove.

Campbell River Mirror