Eagles grab share of overall top spot
The Canmore Eagles hold a share of first place overall in the Alberta Junior Hockey League by picking up three of a possible four points as they played their first games of 2025.
Canmore (28-8-4-1 for 47 points) rang in the New Year with a storming celebration, hammering the Drumheller Dragons 7-2 on Friday (Jan. 3) and running their Canmore Recreation Centre winning streak to eight games. Unfortunately, that home-ice winning streak would end the following night (Saturday, Jan. 4) when the Drayton Valley Thunder snuck out a 4-3 overtime win.
A Saturday victory would have put the Eagles alone atop the AJHL at week’s end. Instead the team shares first with North Division-leading Whitecourt Wolverines (22-8-2-1), who managed just one point from its opening two games of 2025, and the Calgary Canucks (22-9-1-2), who posted two home-ice victories out of the break and are undefeated in 10 consecutive games at the Max Bell Centre.
Canmore lost three players during the holiday period as Zach Coutu decided to join the Trail Smoke Eaters of the BCHL while his twin brother Carter Coutu as well as Carter Davis both decided to step away from competitive hockey.
This coming week, Canmore heads out on its final extended road trip of the regular season with games in Camrose on Friday, Jan. 10, Lloydminster on Saturday, Jan. 11 and Devon on Sunday, Jan. 12. The Camrose Kodiaks (19-8-2-2) are third in the South just five points back with three games in hand on both the Eagles and Canucks, its next two opponents.
Dragons 2 at Eagles 7
Canmore scored six power-play goals, including five in the second period, en route to its second seven-goal display of the season.
Ten Canmore players recorded points led by Kayden Rawji with one goal (11th goal of the season) and three assists. Two-goal games came from Rhett Dekowny (12 & 13) and Cohen Daoust (8 & 9), with Dekowny also registering one assist.
Owen Jones (13) and Nolan Kazeil (2) also scored for the Eagles, who led 1-0 after the first period and 6-1 after two periods. Jones also had one assist.
Cole Wadsworth and Aiden Tkachuk assisted on two goals apiece.
Scoring for Drumheller were Ellis Mieyette and Nathan Hawkins.
Canmore outshot Drumheller 40-30 with Alex Schweiller in goal for the Eagles. Sean Cootes started for the Dragons and was pulled at 4:13 of the second period after giving up four goals on 19 shots, with Matthew Kondro finishing the game.
Canmore’s power play finished 6-for-11 while Drumheller was 0-for-5.
Thunder 4 at Eagles 3 (OT)
Late-game heroics looked to have won the game for Canmore, only to have its taken away by even later game heroics by the visitors.
Despite being in fifth place in the South Division, the Thunder have given the Eagles fits all season and won for the third time in four meetings between the two teams.
Luke Marley (9) wired home the game winner 4:32 into the overtime session: a long, high and hard shot that went over the shoulder of Canmore goaltender Hudson Sedo and smashed the water bottle off the top of the net.
Marley’s goal was certainly the treat of the night for the Thunder, who stayed in this game thanks to a couple of more pedestrian long-range shots that opened the scoring and then tied the game in the final minute of regulation time.
Billy Hooson scored his first goal of the season at 3:59 of the second period, a slow slider that feathered its way through everyone before stopping over the goal line, to give the Thunder a 1-0 lead.
Dekowny (14) would tie the game midway through the first period only to have Gabriel Filion (3) on the power play finish off an end-to-end rush with a brilliant shot to reassert the Thunder’s advantage.
A pair of third-period goals by Owen Jones (14 & 15), with the later coming at 17:22 would finally give the Eagles the lead. However, Matthias Bessey (3) would send this game to overtime when he tipped in Tucker Tullikopf’s point shot, another long, slow slider that eluded Eagles defenders.
The Thunder then used a slow, methodical overtime performance to put themselves in position to pull off the game-winning, scoring play in the final 30 seconds.
Drayton Valley outshot Canmore 39-38 with Nicholas Cristiano in goal for the Thunder.
Canmore was 0-for-4 in this contest, while Drayton Valley scored on its lone man-advantage situation.
The Eagles have won just three of eight overtime/shootout games this season while the Thunder have won six of 12 games requiring extra time or a shootout.
The notebook
With the recent explosion in goal scoring, Canmore now has three players in the top 10 in the league.
Jones ran his points streak to nine games, the longest active streak in the AJHL, with a pair of two-point games (3G-1A) and is now fourth in league scoring with 34 points (15G-19A).
Dekowny picked up three points in each of the two games (3G-3A) and has climbed to ninth in league scoring with 32 points (14G-18A), while extending his points streak to five games.
Rawji is also on 32 points (11G-21A) with a four-game, active streak including Friday’s four-point game.
Daoust’s multi-goal game against Drumheller was his first in 75 AJHL games, giving him 15 points (9G-6A) for the season.
Defenceman Casey Black has points in 10 of 11 games he has played since returning to the Canmore Eagles in late November (3G-8A—11Pts).
Fellow blue liner Nolan Kazeil has two goals in his last five games after the defenceman scored just once in his previous 124 regular-season games.
Still looking for their first goals of the season are defencemen Haruki Morikawa (32 games), Keston Beagle (29 games) and Jaren Brinson (15 games), who returned to action Friday after missing two months due to an ankle injury.
The duo of Sedo and Scheiwiller gives Canmore two of the top four netminders in the AJHL.
Sedo is 7-3-1 with a third-best 2.35 goals-against average and a .922 save percentage but is battling through a recent slump that sees him on a four-game losing streak (three regulation losses and an overtime defeat) after beginning the season with seven consecutive wins. The rookie goaltender has only had two appearances for the Eagles since Nov. 11, spending much of that month training with the Prince Albert Raiders, then in December was away with the Canada West team at the World Junior A Challenge.
The bulk of the work has been handled by Scheiwiller, who is 14-5-3 with a fourth-best 2.36 goals-against average and a .920 save percentage. The veteran goaltender is 10-1-1 in his last 12 games dating back to Nov. 22 when Canmore began its eight-game, home-ice winning streak – and has won each of his last four starts. He has only been beaten for three goals once – and that was a victory — in those dozen games.
A shout-out has to go to all the fans supporting the Eagles this season. With an announced crowd of 905 on Friday and 734 on Saturday, the Eagles have crossed over the 700 fans per game average making a game-day ticket a prized possession. The Eagles have 20 remaining game including nine more regular-season home games at the Canmore Recreation Centre and one game (Feb. 11) to play in Banff.
EAGLES NEST: Canmore is hosting Hockey Day in Canada Jan. 15-18, check out the full lineup of events as well as purchase tickets for those events and Eagles’ home games at
canmoreeagles.ca/tickets. … You can watch Eagles’ games as well as the rest of the AJHL online, along with much more live and on demand hockey, through a FloSports subscription available at
flohockey.tv.
Russ Ullyot
