U13AA Hurricanes crowned provincial champions

By Lethbridge Herald on April 4, 2023.

SUBMITTED PHOTO The Lethbridge U13AA Hurricanes capped off a great season with a Provincial Championship win in Olds over the weekend.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge Hurricanes U13AA concluded what was a stellar season by winning the Provincial Championship banner in Olds this past weekend.

The Canes blanked Calgary’s NWCAA Stamps 5-0 in the final on Sunday afternoon to claim the provincial title in a tournament where Lethbridge went undefeated.

“Well the obvious reaction (is) it feels really good,” said head coach Greg Cowie.

“I’m very happy for all the athletes on our team, first and foremost. It’s something pretty special … So it’s a pretty huge accomplishment for these kids. It’s a very hard road to get there and I’m really happy for all the kids or all the athletes that they were able to do this. It was really interesting to watch them, and watch their reactions when they won ,and to see the  happiness in their faces and to really understand that they achieved something that a lot of people never get the opportunity to.”

Cowie thought Lethbridge’s strength all tournament long was defence.

“We have fantastic goaltending (Chase Nielson and Oliver Skog) — both kids are great goaltenders and both helped our team win from October right until the end of the season,” said Cowie.

“I mean we had three straight shutouts to finish off the tournament and both those kids were fantastic. And we talked defence all year long, we worked on D-zone daily, we did tons of back checking (and) tons of support drills. Everything was defence, defence, defence and really our offence started in the defensive zone because we were able to cause so many turnovers and transition from playing defence.”

Lethbridge went into the tournament as the only league finalist and Cowie had mentioned before the tournament the Hurricanes had to prove themselves going in and ultimately did that.

“Well the win column and I think it was by the way that we were fortunate enough to beat those teams,” said Cowie.

“I’m going to a call spade-of-spade here, we didn’t get lucky in those games. Our team competed like crazy and earned everything that they received from the first puck drop to the final buzzer. They outworked all four of those teams that we played against and they wanted to outwork them.”

The Hurricanes had a perfect 4-0 record in the tournament after a 10-3 win over the St. Albert Stars on March 30, a 5-1 win over the Stamps and a 4-0 shutout over the host Olds Grizzlys and a 6-0 victory over Leduc to conclude the round robin on April 1 before the championship game on Sunday.

The club finished atop their division with a 26-5-1 regular season record, won the South Division championship tournament , were swept by Olds in the league final before winning the Provincial Championship.