Congratulations to the Rangers Peewee A White team who travelled to Detroit this past weekend to participate in their first big travel tournament of the year and facing some stiff competition from both north and south of the border were able to bring home the coveted Motown Classic Cup!
The team opened up the tournament with a convincing 8-0 win vs. Farmington Hills Fire AA team, followed up with another shut-out victory against the Rocky River Pirates A1 squad 4-0. After watching their hometown heroes the Maple Leafs get shut-down at 'The Joe' on Saturday night, the boys had an opportunity to right a wrong and took it to the Prince Edward County Kings BB team 5-2 on the same 'Joe' ice surface the following day to advance to the finals.
In the finals playing against another Canadian squad, the Mississauga Ice Warriors AA team, the Rangers found themselves in an early deficit 2-0 only to fight back to a 3-3 draw before their opponents took a 4-3 lead very late in the game. To make matters worse, with under 1 ½ minutes remaining we took an ill-timed penalty to go shorthanded, and were destined to go home with silver. But as fate would have it, Scotty "Hollywood" Armes intercepted a pass deep in our end of the ice and found Riley "Put-me-in-Coach" Crawford breaking out into the neutral zone with a tape-to-tape pass that had him split two defenders and found the back of the net to send the game into OT. Unfortunately, OT settled nothing and this nail-biter of a game was now heading into the dreaded shoot-out. After the first 5 shooters, the score was still in a deadlock, but with our 6th shooter, defenseman Daniel "I Should have been a Forward" Munro up, anything was possible – including the game-winning goal!!!
Congratulations to Head Coach Dave Bessant, Asst Coaches Jason Diplock & Brad Webster, Trainer Greg "Doc" Teague and Manager, Robert Crawford and the entire Peewee A White team on their first tournament victory this season. Special mention to both Jackson "Jacko" Roode and Alex "Big Z" Zamuner for their shutout victories and to Torin "Hess" Hession who was the hometown hero MVP!
Congratulations to all other members of the Peewee A White Rangers team: Tyler Diplock (D), Ben Teague (D), Patrick Dubreuil (D), Will Conn (D), Jacob Mathers (D), Cole Webster (F), Trevor Chau (F), Connor Calvert (F), Josh Platt (F), Kobe Arai (F), Michael Neil-Mahovlich (F) and Charlie Langlois (AP). Finally a thank you to the Rangers Fan Club - we couldn't have done it without your support and passion!