Raiders gain experience at year-end tournament
Aryssah Stankevitsch
Times Reporter
After just squeaking into the playoffs’ seventh seed, the Rockyview Raiders were to face second seed CRAA Gold, third seed CBHA Blackhawks, and fifth seed CRAA Blue in the round robin of the Sutter Cup. Losing their first game, and tying their next two, the Raiders failed to win their pool and advance.
“We were close. I don’t think we played with the same energy we had the previous three weeks, to get ourselves in (to the Sutter Cup),” Raiders coach Doug Thurston said. “We tried to show the boys it was do or die. We were still desperate. Other teams stepped up their game too.”
In the Raiders first matchup against CRAA Gold on March 6, it was 1-0 for the majority of the game. Gold scored another late in the third, and won 2-0. Rockyview only managed 13 shots, but had a better effort, Thurston said.
“The shot count was lopsided but scoring chances were fairly even. We just didn’t finish on ours. That kind of put us in a hole. When we finally started to play, we played like we could,” Thurston said. “I was a little disappointing just because their energy was lacking in the first game and the first period in the second game.”
That second game, against CBHA Blawkhawks on March 7, the Raiders came back from a 3-0 deficit after changing netminders. Siksika’s Trygve Many Guns scored on the powerplay, and Strathmore’s Chris Rebeyka also knotted a goal. Rebeyka also assisted on the eventual game-tying powerplay goal, in the last six minutes of the game. Thurston was very much impressed by his work ethic.
“I thought Chris was really good down the stretch, and continued it right through the playoffs,” Thurston said. “He was one of our more consistent players. There were some other guys that I didn’t think brought their A-game for the first part of the tournament, but certainly that wasn’t Chris.”
With the loss and the tie, the Raiders were placed in a tough situation. Teams had already advanced to the semifinals with their results, and now for Rockyview, the third game had no impact on their finish.
“The math didn’t work out for us,” Thurston said. “There was no pressure; there was no benefit to winning or losing. I just told the guys to play for themselves as a group.”
The game led to a 3-3 tie with CRAA Blue on March 8; Rebeyka scored once more, while Strathmore’s Kody Hammond and Liam Rycroft had one assist each.
The Raiders came a long way from early in the season with a dismal record. In November, Thurston thought his boys didn’t have a chance to make the playoffs, as they’d only won three of their first 15 games.
“We had such a slow start I didn’t know where it was going to end up,” he said. “We showed glimpses of getting it, as a group. January was when they started to come together and play as a team.”
His squad got along very well off the ice but on the ice, he felt the boys focused too much on individual play at the beginning of the season.
“Once we got out of that mode and started to share the puck a little bit, our powerplay started coming through for us. A lot of good things happened,” he said. “But we kind of tripped coming out of the gate and couldn’t make that happen.”
Thurston admitted, this is not where he saw his team placing at the Sutter Cup, having come so far for their 14-18-5 season record.
“With a bounce here or there, we could have made the semis. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied. They’re a great group of guys – absolutely outstanding kids,” Thurston said. “There were a lot of positives over the season.”
Those positives included strong finishes in the Prospect Cup and Edge Tournament.