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The Interior News
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
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Storm hit halfway mark, aim for provincials By Nolan Kelly Smithers/Interior News
The Midget Storm hit the halfway mark of their season this week, boasting a 15-5 overall record, including tournament play. They are undefeated in the Skeena Valley Hockey League at 6-0-0, with two games left before Christmas and four in January. In tournament play they’ve had two podium finishes in Kelowna and Prince George. Head coach Brendan Hutchinson has been impressed with what he’s seen. “We have got an awesome group of kids,” Hutchinson said. “They get along really well, they are really coachable and it’s been a lot of fun. On the ice, I think we have a really high skill-set, we skate well and we have good speed.” This weekend the Midget Storm will travel to Terrace to play back-to-back games against their biggest rivals, before hosting two exhibition games the following weekend. After that, it’s the Christmas break. The Midget Storm will take two weeks off before wrapping up their season in January. They’ve applied to compete at this year’s provincial
competition as a tier two team, one level up from their current tier three status. “I would rather play good teams and lose, then blowout bad teams,” Hutchinson said. Based on population alone, Smithers just barely makes it into the tier three category, but teams often move up a level, they just can’t move down one. Hutchinson expects to find out if their application has been approved later this week. If it is, they’ll go up against other tier two teams from Vanderhoof, Ft. St. James and Fraser Lake to represent the northwest at provincials. Two months in, the goals haven’t changed. “We’d still like to win our league for sure, make it to provincials and we expect to do really well in Kamloops. We have a talented group, of players, we just have to work on our consistency a bit.” The Bantam Storm are also at the halfway point and are starting to come together as a team. So far this season they are 2-5-0 in the Skeena Valley Hockey League, in third place out of four teams. Last weekend they returned from winning a tournament over teams from Kitimat, Vanderhoof
The Smithers Storm teams are all at the halfway point in their seasons, on track to realize the goals they set at the beginning of the year.
Nolan Kelly photo
and hosts Terrace. It didn’t start well though. They lost their first game to Terrace, bounced back with a win over Vanderhoof and finished by tying Kitimat at four. The record was enough to advance to the final, where they got a little revenge over their rivals from Terrace, beating them 3-2. The victory over Terrace was their first of the year, after dropping 10-2 and 6-1 decisions earlier in the season. “We probably didn’t expect to win that tournament,” head coach Don Pederson said. “We just wanted to have a
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good showing against some really strong teams. Our defence played great and our goalie played really good.” Like the midgets, the bantam’s goal is to get into the provincial tournament and go from there. In the Skeena Valley Hockey League, both Kitimat and Vanderhoof are tier two teams, so in order to advance, the bantams will have to playoff against Terrace in the zone final, making their win over them in the recent tournament all the more important. “That was a step in the right direction, for sure. That should give
us some confidence when we do see them in zones. Pederson is starting to see improvement. “I think we are seeing better effort from everyone, knowledge of what to do in certain situations and we are playing better defence, not giving up as many wide open chances as we were earlier in the season.” The bantams are off now, for the Christmas break. They’ll head to Vanderhoof for their fourth tournament of the season in early January, before wrapping up the regular season. “Overall, I think
we have a great group of kids, it’s been a bit of a challenge on the ice, but we are starting to come together.” The peewee Storm are coming off a strong tournament play, and begging to get the hang of their first year of competitive hockey. “The team is progressing well,” head coach Dave Tucker said. “We have a lot of players in their first year, so that’s a bit of a learning curve.” It’s a notoriously difficult jump from house league atom to rep. team peewee, so, for the first few months of the season, the focus is on helping the players adjust to the higher level of competition and the implementation of more team oriented play. “The biggest difference is that in atom house there is a much wider range of talent. “In peewee, all the guys on the ice are pretty solid players. “We are working on going from individual skill focus to team concepts and tactics and helping the players adjust to the size and strength.” Though a Canadawide bodychecking ban was put into place for peewee this season, the game is far more physical at the peewee level. “There are a lot more battles for the
puck and the games are getting more serious as they go up each level, but I think the biggest thing is developing the team concept,” Tucker said. Tucker is encouraged by the improvement he’s seen. “I think over the last few weeks we have shown quite a bit of improvement, and we feel pretty comfortable going into the second half of the season.” In their most recent tournament, they lost games to Williams Lake and Prince George – both tier two teams – but played them close. “That was a positive result for us, we did really well in the semifinal against Prince George, so we were pleased.” In league play they’ll likely face a stiff challenge from Terrace for the Skeena Valley title. “Terrace is really strong and it looks like they are the team to beat,” Tucker said. “They have handled us pretty good so far, but hopefully we can improve and do well against them and the other teams we have to face to get into provincials.” In their tournaments so far this season they’ve made two finals and a semifinal. They’ll travel to Prince George next week for a tournament before the Christmas break.