Hayden Telford was talking in whispers after his peewee Titans lost 5-2 to his sister's team in the final of the D&G Placer Mining bantam female hockey tournament Sunday at Kin 2.
Sometime during the three-day tournament, Hayden lost his voice.
It might have been from yelling at his sister Stashia, just to try to get her off her game as a stay-at-home defenceman. If that was his motive to try to win what was informally dubbed the Telford Cup, it didn't work.
Stashia's Western Industrial Contracting bantam female Cougars did nothing but win at the five-team tournament, continuing the success that began in November when they captured their bantam Tier 2 division title at the Wickenheiser World Female Hockey Festival in Calgary.
WIC opened their home tournament with a 7-2 win over the Titans and Cougars head coach Rick Turgeon was impressed with the peewee team's improvement over the course of the three-day event.
"They got better and better as the tournament went on, they had less individual effort and they were using their teammates to move the puck around and they gave us all we could handle," said Turgeon.
Pyper Alexander got the bantams' offence cooking late in the first period with a shorthanded goal, a deke through the legs of goalie Jaiden Jakubowski. Brette Kerley, who commutes with Alexander from their homes in Williams Lake to play for the Cougars, popped in a rebound 16:26 into the second period. Not long after that, Jordan Maloney went wide to avoid Donovan Turner and scored her first of two goals for a 3-0 Cougars' lead.
"We're lucky to have Brette and Pyper come up from Williams Lake, it's quite a commitment on their part to come up for practices and games and they're two special players," said Turgeon. "Jordan is a good hard worker with good talent as well and they work well together. Pyper's speed was the difference today, the Titans couldn't handle it. She was in on all the goals."
The Titans went on the power play early in the third period and finally solved Cougars goalie Tessa Sturgeon. Hayden Telford booted the puck to hold it in the offensive zone and it landed on the stick of Hunter Kiraly, whose shot was deflected by linemate Darien Maduke into the net.
The Williams Lake connection struck again midway through the third period. Alexander and Kerley showed their puckhandling skills and worked the puck deep on the Titans' goal and Maloney got to the rebound for her second of the game. Less than a minute later, Owen Anderson gave the boys some hope when he picked the corner on Sturgeon from the face-off circle. In the last minute, with Titans' relief goalie Navann LaMarre on the bench, Sasha Schurack fired in an empty-netter from long range.
"Playing them is faster-paced than our (peewee house) league and we had a hard time beating them, but I think we did alright," said Kiraly.
"We played good because the coaches told us to dump the puck and we did that. We played better that way than when we first started this. I'm really happy with how our line played today."
Maloney says her team's size advantage and their additional hockey experience, as compared to the two-years-younger peewee boys, made a difference.
"They're a lot smaller and they just think they can stickhandle through all of us sometimes," said Maloney. "We just worked together. I've played with Brette before, but never Piper, this is our first year playing from the beginning of the year."
Said Alexander: "The boys are more cocky - very much. It was more of challenge. Even though they're peewees, it's a challenge. It was pretty sweet winning."
The WIC Cougars are on the road the next three weekends.
They'll be playing in Surrey this weekend, then go to Vanderhoof for exhibition games against Team Northwest. Then it's off to Jasper for a tournament. The Cougars will represent the north central region at the provincial championship in Richmond, March 19-23.
