By Stephanie Stevens
It’s about more than just on-ice practice; you need trust as well.
The Columbia Valley Rockies levelled up their play last weekend with back-to-back wins, first in an away game against the Creston Valley Thunder Cats November 8 and then home in Eddie Mountain Memorial Arena hosting the Fernie Ghostriders November 9.
“I?thought the weekend was excellent, not just from the perspective of winning both games. I was really happy to see the way the guys started trusting each other and having each other’s backs,” said head coach Tayler Sincennes.
“We executed the little details really well in both games. In the Creston game we dominated with simple play and high-paced hockey.”
The 5-1 win started with captain Kobe Mason beating the ‘Cats goalie in the first period (assists by Dylan Duzan and Teo Fath).
The second period cinched the win with goals from Carter Velker (Owen Ditzel and Carter Hensch), Peter Godley (Ethan Cerone and Bryan Kim), Kim (Cerone and Godley) and Duzan (Johnny Lozeman and Paddy Donahue). Between the pipes Ryan Bain stopped 29 of 30 shots on goal.
Back home in the Eddie the next night the Rockies continued to use that training and trust.
“Saturday we had to stick with it a little bit more as we were in a tight checking playoff style game and again, I thought the guys did an excellent job trusting the process,” said Sincennes. “We never wavered from our game plan.”
Associate coach Tucker Braund said he was really pleased with how the entire weekend went.
“We played our whole lineup, all 25 guys saw action over two games and we won two big divisional games,” Braund said. “Fernie definitely had that playoff game feeling, our team did a good job sticking together and sticking with the plan, and we finally got a bounce our way with a late powerplay and we executed on it.”?
Braund added: “We battled, we had a late penalty against us in the third period and our penalty kill had to go to work against Fernie’s?good powerplay and they did an excellent job which gave us the chance to win later in the game.” ?
Lucas Masters (Carter Tuplin and Fath) opened up the scoring for the hometown boys in the first period with Velker (Noah Asmundson and Ditzel) taking the lead at the end of the first.
The ‘Riders tied it up in the second, and the third period saw the teams battle it out right to the last minute when Ashton Sledz (Kim and Asmundson) potted the winning goal.
Jaiden Jakubowski was in goal and stopped 29 of 31 shots.
Braund said both goalies proved their mettle in their respective games.
“(Ryan) Bain had a great game Friday. Even though they got the first goal he stuck in there and battled it out so we could win,” he said. “Jako gave us the chance to win Saturday . . . he was really good the whole game.”?
“The crowd on Saturday was really great . . . lots of energy and lots of people which was awesome to see,” added Sincennes.
The Rockies will be away playing Kimberley Friday, Nov. 15 and the next home game is Saturday, Nov. 16 against the Beaver Valley Nite Hawks.
PHOTO STEPHANIE STEVENS
