Chiefs South Division champs; Braves eliminated

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Wheatland Chiefs booked their trip to the league final and were crowned South Division champs with a pair of 5-0 wins over the Okotoks Oilers on March 6 and 8.
Head coach Devin Olson could not have been any happier with his troops in executing the game plan.
“We came out and as long as you match them for the first bit, you can take it to them after that, which is what we did in both games,” said Olson. “Our goalie stood on his head both games and kept us in it and gave us a chance. Once we got a few goals on them, they just shut down, and we just kept playing our game.”
The Oilers were a rough team in the series and because of their undisciplined play, the Chiefs were able to capitalize.
“They were taking penalties and our guys skated away from it and we went on the power play, so that helped,” said Olson.
He thought that the boys played to their strengths and did not give Okotoks much to work with.
“I think it definitely started with goaltending and (they) just played the way that we wanted them to, just simply dumping it in and wear the teams down, try to get every puck to the net when we could,” said Olson.
Kyle Rosolowski led Game 1 with two goals, while Ryan Skytt, Jason Hobson and Kody Hammond added one a piece to round out the offense.
Skytt scored two while Chris Rebeyka, Brendan Moore and Cole Bussingler scored in Game 2.
The local double-A midget team will play one of the two Red Deer teams (series tied at one) in the league final. For schedule information, check out www.scahl.com for more details.

 

Grizzlys sweep Braves
The Wheatland Braves playoff championship hopes were dashed on March 8 as the Olds Grizzlys swept the series 2-0 with a 4-3 win in Game 2.
Olds was able to win 6-5 in Hussar on March 6 in Game 1.
“We thought we were going to have an easier time with them than we did because we beat them 5-1 and 9-1 in the two previous games,” said head coach Keith Klemmensen. “Credit goes to their coaching staff and the players on that team, they ignored that result and outworked us (in Game 1).”
Despite the less-than-impressive effort in the first game, Klemmensen was impressed with how the players were able to rebound with a better effort, but felt that he could have had the team better prepared.
“We played better than we did on Friday, again I give that team a lot of credit, they had their boys well prepared and obviously I did not have our team prepared well enough,” said Klemmensen. “I still see a lot of measuring going on instead of guys just skating hard to the net with the puck. There was a lot of stuff that we were doing late in the season that we weren’t doing earlier when we were having success.”
The difference in the series was that Olds had everyone working hard while the local double-A peewee team could not say the same.
“It looked like to me that Olds had no passengers in their last two efforts. It was all hands on deck, I can’t say that about our team, even (in Game 2) we started great the first 10 minutes and we got back to gliding instead of striding,” said Klemmensen.
The boys will hopefully be able to get redemption on the Grizzlys, as they will now prepare for provincials in Olds from March 19-22.

 

Warriors season done
The Bow Valley Timberwolves gave the Wheatland Warriors all they could handle and ultimately got the best of them as they finished the series off with a convincing 5-1 win in the decisive Game 3 on March 4 at the Strathmore Family Centre.
It appeared the Warriors just could not figure out the pesky Timberwolves, who gave them trouble all year.
The local bantam double-A team found themselves down 4-0 until the last minute of the second, when Jayden Hendricks was able to get the Warriors on the board with six seconds left in the second with assists going to Tyler Skehar and Jared Kirkpatrick.