PHOTO: Colton Young, an affiliate player from the Calgary Royals AAA Midget team, scored his first AJHL goal on Friday night as the Eagles defeated Grand Prairie 4-3. – photo courtesy of Pam Doyle.
UPCOMING HOME GAME
Saturday, Feb. 20 – Whitecourt Wolverines at Canmore – 7 PM
It certainly wasn’t pretty, but the Canmore Eagles hung on to defeat the visiting Grande Prairie Storm 4-3 in Alberta Junior Hockey League action Friday night at the Canmore Recreation Centre.
The victory, before 425 fans, improves the Eagles record to 24-24-6, while the Storm fell to 9-41-3.
With the two points in the standings, Canmore now has 54 points and sits in fourth-place in the AJHL Southern Division standings, seven points up on the fifth-place Drumheller Dragons. A fourth-place finish would guarantee home-ice advantage for the Eagles in the opening round of the playoffs, which are slated to start in mid-March. The Eagles have six games left to play in the regular season, while the Dragons have just five games remaining.
Braden Sartesky (16th), Colton Young (1st), Logan Ferguson (18th) and Adam Tisdale (10th) had the Eagle goals. Eagle goaltender Ryan Bontorin stopped 40 of 43 Storm shots to improve his record to 15-16-4 and was named the Eagles “Star of the Game”. Canmore was outshot 43-33 on the night.
“Well, the best thing about tonight's game was the play of our affiliate player Colton Young,” said Eagles Head Coach and General Manager Andrew Milne, whose club has gone 4-0-2 in February. “Young was great tonight. He was strong on pucks and made smart reads. His future looks bright. Our team was not great tonight but we played just good enough to win. We will have to be much better for tomorrow – that's for sure.”
The Eagles will wrap up their current four-game home stand with a game against the Whitecourt Wolverines on Saturday night. The Wolverines are 39-10-5, are ranked ninth in the nation, and defeated the Okotoks Oilers 5-3 on Friday night.
NOTEBOOK: Tonight’s game will feature Calgary Flame announcer Beelsey in the PA booth . . . The winning ticket for the Calgary Flames Road Trip raffle will also be pulled during the second intermission.