19 young men from our small communities along the South Shore and Southwest Nova went to Halifax this week to battle their way to an Esso Atlantic Major Bantam Championship as proud members of the Western Hurricanes Hockey Club.  With relentless effort, they did just that, bringing home a championship banner !

The 2012 Esso Atlantic Major Bantam Cup started this past Wednesday with the top 24 teams in Atlantic Canada.  It’s known as one of the toughest tournaments to win because of the amount of teams, the level of competition and the grind of playing 7 games in 4 days if you get to the championship.  During the preliminary round, your Hurricanes started the tournament with a 2 – 2 tie against Truro on Wednesday.  Thursday saw us up against Moncton and a complete game gave us a 5 – 0 win.  Friday brought the Saint John Seadogs, who previously entering the tournament had not lost a game all season until they met your Hurricanes.  Another solid effort gave us a 3 – 2 win.  The battle with a very good Saint John team propelled the team’s confidence going into the final preliminary game against Peninsula Acadienne of NB on Saturday morning.  In that game, a 6 – 0 victory was gained.  With the preliminary games over, the top 8 teams of the tournament moved onto the quarterfinals.  Your Hurricanes were ranked second overall with 3 wins, 1 tie and 16 goals for with only 4 against.

During the Saturday evenings quarterfinals, the 7^th ranked high skilled KV Rangers of New Brunswick were the opponents.  Again with incredible attention to details and second efforts, your Hurricanes came out with a 3 – 0 win and a berth in Sunday morning’s semifinals. 
 
Again, here come the Saint John Seadogs as opponents in the semifinals.  As they were looking for retribution, your Hurricanes pushed back even harder on route to a 3 – 1 victory. 

With a very short turnaround time of about 3 hours between the semifinals and championship game, players began to physically and mentally prepare for a battle against the Cape Breton Cougars.  Cape Breton too, came into the contest undefeated all season.  Your Hurricanes knew that they were facing an exceptionally good Cape Breton team who battle hard every shift.  Your Hurricanes came out flying, gaining a 3 – 0 lead heading into the third period.  Cape Breton, as is expected, did not give up and narrowed the gap to one with two third period goals.  However, Hurricane players did everything champs need to do in order to win and when the final buzzer of the week went off … it was a 4 – 2 championship win.

It was a great week of hockey displayed by all 24 teams in the tournament, a well run tournament by the Halifax Major Bantam organization. 

Without question, this was a total team effort of 19 young men contributing to a championship.  In 7 games, scoring 26 goals for and only 6 against equates into a total team effort.  Great job boys, the entire organization, the fans, your friends / family and supporters of Hurricane Hockey are so proud of you!

During the awards ceremony, Colby Muise and Luke Emin were named as co –winners of the tournament’s top goaltender award.  Defensemen, Quinten Johnson was named to the tournament’s Second Team All Star team and captain Keith Getson was named tournament MVP.  Congratulations.

GO HURRICANES !!