With 34 seconds left on the clock, Jadyn Hickey bedeviled the Vancouver Angels.
The Prince George Scotiabank peewee female Cougars forward put the puck into the net for the decisive goal in a 2-1 win over the Vancouver hosts in a tournament final on Sunday.
Hickey also scored the Cougars' first goal to help clinch the celebration - the Cougars' first tournament win this season. Not only did that erase the bitter taste of a 2-1 loss to Vancouver earlier in the tournament and the Angels' 7-3 win over Prince George in a Kamloops tournament, but it put the Cougars on a winning roll as they head into this weekend's Scotiabank peewee female rep tournament at the Kin Centre.
Backed by the goaltending of Tessa Sturgeon, the Cougars went 3-1 in the Vancouver tournament. They're playing their best hockey of the season.
"It was good to see some improvement from where we started out in November in Kamloops," said Cougars head coach Brett Hickey. "They were all close games. Tessa played well.
"[In the final] Vancouver probably had more and better scoring chances. She made some nice saves throughout the whole tournament."
The Cougars open today at 2 p.m. at Kin 2 against Kamloops, then play the College Heights Scotiabank atom house 1 boys team tonight at 6:15, also at Kin 2. The atom boys were a late replacement for the Grande Prairie team which canceled due to the death of the team trainer, who is the wife of the team's assistant coach. The funeral is this weekend.
West Kootenay is also entered in the tournament. Semifinals are scheduled for Saturday at 3:30 and 6 p.m. at Kin 2, and the final will be played Sunday at 10:30 a.m., also at Kin 2.
"It will be a good test again to see how much we've developed," said coach Hickey. "We haven't seen [Kamloops and West Kootenay] since early November. We play the atom house 1 teams throughout the year and that seems to be decent competition for the peewee girls. The boys don't want to lose to the girls and vice-versa.
"We're a hard-working team and the girls always listen well. Nobody is going to carry us on their own, we just try to preach everybody [playing] and try to balance the lines."
