Winterhawks AA minor peewees maintain OMHA supremacy; clinch second straight title, News, Minor PeeWee, U13, 2016-2017, AA (Milton Minor Hockey)

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Mar 20, 2017 | mlemaire | 1432 views
Winterhawks AA minor peewees maintain OMHA supremacy; clinch second straight title
For John Hendry, Saturday’s OMHA championship clincher was met with retroactive relief as much as excitement.

Down 6-3 with just seven minutes remaining in preliminary round action against Guelph in mid-January, the minor peewee AA Winterhawks head coach pulled his goalies three separate times en route to a too-close-for-comfort come-from-behind tie — the equalizer netted with under two minutes to go.

That hard-earned point, and the one stolen from the Gryphons, saved the defending champion Winterhawks from an early exit from OMHA competition.

“That (comeback tie) was massive,” stressed Hendry, pondering the championship run that almost wasn’t.

After sidestepping disaster, Milton — with 14 of 17 players back from last season’s OMHA AA atom title run — lost just one more time on the way to a second straight championship.

Saturday’s 3-0 win in Barrie punctuated a final series sweep, with all nine forwards scoring during the three games against the Colts.

It was their sixth shutout of the post-season.

“These guys know how to win… they know what it takes and the gravity of the situation,” said Hendry, noting that the four-game semifinal win over Oakville had more of a championship intensity and was an overall tougher test. His team finished first in the regular season, going 24-2-2. “To repeat (as champions) at rep or a high level of any sport is almost impossible. We knew going into this season that we’d have to duplicate last year’s efforts or be even better because everybody was going to be throwing their number one goalie at us and trying to knock us off the top. The way these guys responded to that was really impressive.”

Buoyed by a raucous traveling fan base in Barrie, Milton grabbed a 2-0 lead before the game was three minutes old.

John Harper and Tristan Tremble found the back of the net less than a minute apart to tighten the Winterhawks’ hammerlock on the championship.

From there, tight checking and sharp goaltending by Jack Wolchuk would keep Barrie at bay until Christian Lemaire essentially iced the game with an insurance goal inside the last three minutes.

Graeme MacAuley assisted on the first and final goals, with Lemaire, Ethan Rye and Owen Stott also drawing helpers.

Wolchuk and Max Oldacre stood tall between the pipes in games one and two respectively, backstopping Milton to 5-2 and 4-1 victories.

A balanced attack and suffocating defence factored heavily in the championship.


By: Steve Leblanc, Milton Canadian Champion