When the North Shore Winter Club Winterhawks needed someone to put the sting of defeat into their archrivals from Burnaby, they tapped a northern boy to get the job done.
Knowing a win over the undefeated Bruins would vault North Shore into the B.C. bantam triple-A provincial hockey final, Justin Almeida was only to happy to oblige.
He took a feed from 'Hawks captain Jordan Bellerive and wired a hard 15-foot wrist shot into the top corner behind Burnaby Winter Club Bruins goalie Bryce Schiebel for the 2-1 winner with just 1:19 left in the third period Wednesday afternoon at Kin 1.
"It was a great pass from Jordie, I saw the net and I knew I wasn't going to miss it and I was happy it went in," said the 15-year-old Almeida, who grew up in Kitimat.
Bellerive, whose 19-year-old brother Matt plays for the Kamloops Blazers, is a potential first-overall WHL bantam draft pick and was dangerous whenever he touched the puck, playing on a line with Almeida and Brett Stapley. He figured his late-game dish to Almeida was low-risk, high-reward.
"It's really a pleasure growing up with this guy -- over the years we've developed a great friendship and sometimes it shows on the ice, we have good chemistry," said Bellerive.
Almeida moved two years ago to North Vancouver, where his mother was undergoing cancer treatments and hooked up with Bellerive and some of his other teammates on a spring hockey team. He started playing with the 'Hawks last season.
"One of the coaches, Billy Copeland, invited me down -- so I was like, it's better than Kitimat hockey and I'll get more exposure and get better -- so I went down there and I've been with North Shore ever since," said Almeida.
Almeida's mom is healthy again and he says he's "almost 100 per cent certain" he'll play in Prince George next season in the B.C. Major Midget Hockey League with the Cariboo Cougars.
"It would be exciting coming back to the north, where I'm from, playing with guys I know," he said.
The Hawks won the Pacific Coast bantam league but in the playoff final Burnaby beat them 2-1 and North Shore head coach Jim Dinwoodie was not surprised Wednesday's game was another nailbiter.
"This is probably 50-plus years of rivalry, it's got a deep long tradition of rivalry," he said. "This puts it back in their court, they have to play Kamloops [today] and the winner comes through [to the final]. It puts the pressure on them to win and it's as important for Kamloops as it is for them."
Having Almeida come to the rescue Wednesday put North Shore in the driver's set. They'll play for their third-straight triple-A bantam provincial title tonight at 8 p.m.
"He's one of the best bantam players I've had the privilege to coach," said Dinwoodie. "He has that northern spirit to him and works his ass off. He scores big goals in big moments. He's special."
What was billed as a possible final preview between two bitter rivals lived up the hype. From start to finish the intensity level was high and both teams attacked each other with a barrage of bodychecks, most of which were within the rules of hockey.
The Bruins did get into penalty trouble and got behind in the shot count for the first half of the game but they struck first on the scoreboard with a power-play goal 13:51 into the second period. Liam Evanson won a face-off in the North Shore end and unloaded a shot at Dorrin Luding that deflected up and in off the goalie's stick.
Burnaby was already killing a penalty near the end of the second when Bruins defenceman Jordan Santalucia took out Bellerive with a check from behind that left the North Shore captain lying in the corner nursing a sore chin. Santalucia was banished from the game but Bellerive was back before the period ended.
The 'Hawks had the pressure on with the man advantage to start the third period and with 3:36 gone, Conner McDonald's point shot shattered the shaft of Bruin player's stick and the puck deflected over to Nolan Kneen, who fired it in for the equalizer.
"It was pretty intense to coach and it was a good game, you just hate to see how it ended," said Bruins head coach John Batchelor. "It's usually a one-goal game when we play them. "We knew we would have to beat Kamloops either way, so it had to be a win or it would be a three-way tie for the two spots."
Shots were 35-22 for North Shore.
North Shore (4-0-0) will await the winner of this morning's 11 a.m. matchup between Kamloops and Burnaby (3-1-0). Heading into their game late Wednesday night against the host Prince George Farr Fabricating Cougars, Kamloops had a 2-1-0 record and needed to beat the 0-3-0 Cougars to have a shot at making the final. The Bruins could be without their power-play kingpin and best penalty-killer, Ilijah Colina, who took a puck on the ankle and limped off the ice in the third period.
