The broomball season opened with a bang over the weekend in a rematch of last year’s finals at the Bob Park Opening Tournament at Takhini Arena.
Competition between Coyne and the Roadhouse from last year’s tourney seemed as fierce as ever. Coyne downed the defending champs 3-2 in overtime on Sunday. Three of the tournament’s final four games ended in overtime.
“It was pretty competitive; there were some competitive people and it can get a little serious at times,” said Coyne captain Chris Saunders, who assisted the winning goal, put in by his son Justin. “It could be lots of fun to being pretty competitive.”
Justin, who, like his father and three other teammates, was on the Yukon Brewing Lead Dawgs team that won a bronze medal in the mixed division at the World Broomball Championships two weeks ago in Innsbruk, Austria. Opening the scoring for Coyne in the final were Charlie McLeod and John Tom Tom.
While he made up for it in the end, it was Justin who helped trigger a near comeback for the Roadhouse, taking a penalty that resulted in a power play goal for the Roadhouse from Jake Hanson mid second period.
“Justin took a bad penalty, so they got a power play goal,” said Saunders. “They collapsed on us in the final minutes, caught us running around.”
The Roadhouse then tied the game in dramatic fashion with a flurry of activity in front of the Coyne crease as Jamie Edzerza found the back of the net to tie with 27 seconds on the clock.
“We got a power play and moved the ball around well,” said Roadhouse goaltender Jay Glass. “We scored with about 11 minutes left and we had good momentum after that. I thought we had a lot of good chances after that, but their goaltender was good too.”
Coyne, who won the local league’s playoffs and the closing tournament in Haines Junction last season, defeated the Roadhouse 1-0 early on in the tournament, pushing the Roadhouse into the bottom half of the double-elimination draw. The resulting longer route to the finals meant a few more games for the Roadhouse than Coyne on the road to the final.
“The other thing is we played three games today, basically back-to-back-to-back,” said Glass. “It’s not so hard on us goaltenders, but the out-players were fairly stiff.”
To arrive in the final Coyne dropped Capital Towing 2-1 in overtime with Coyne’s Stephan Saunders getting the game-winner. The loss for Capital Towing, who finished third, pushed the team to the bottom half of the draw where they lost to the Roadhouse, also, 2-1 in overtime.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com