Ayo guess what guys? My U13 hockey team is going to provincials with a record of 4-0-0 in the playoffs, and only 1 loss this whole year. We are the Arborg Falcons. We started out this season strong dropping only one game 7-6 to Lundar in the first half of over 10 games. We got promoted to A because we were destroying our competition and we have not looked back since. Our regular season is ending after our game today against Stonewall. We beat them before already. Our season has been going really good. I have over 80 goals but I don’t remember exactly how much and also I have over 100 points this year but again I don’t remember exactly how much. We have been backed by solid goaltending, Mason and Charlie, and our defense is very good. We play with three lines of forwards and every single one of them can generate tons of offense.  My line is Carter and Tanner playing wing and I play center. Ronnie and Kolby are normally on the same line and lately we have switched Dawson and Tanner so instead of Dawson on my line Tanner is on my line and Dawson is on theirs. and the same for Ryder and Luke. My line normally stays the same but sometimes it gets switched for powerplays and penalty kills. They also get switched up when we have AP’s which are normally Austyn and Wyatt but sometimes we have Locklynn.

Our provincial playoffs were mostly a glide. We started off the first round playing Warren in a best of three. We took the first game and the second game quite easily and then we had to wait for about a week because a COVID wave hit our team. On the other side Lundar was playing Stony Mountain, and it should have been an easy win for Lundar but they surprisingly lost one game and barely squeaked out the 2-1 series win. It all came down to the final series against Lundar. We were obviously the favourites since we beat them in every game we played against them besides one regular season game in the starting half, but that unfortunately meant they had home ice advantage.

In our first game we started slow and Ronnie had to battle us through the opening period where he scored three goals. In the second we regained our traction and I scored a goal. It was right after Lundar scored when I pushed the puck ahead on the faceoff and skated around their defense on my backhand. Then I roofed it backhand. Then I scored another one but one of the players on the other team pushed the puck back before the ref came over so it did not count because the ref did not see it cross the goal line. We were fighting because whoever won this game had a chokehold on the other team in the series so we really needed to win. We had a 7-6 lead with only 20 seconds left and Lundar had their goalie pulled. I knew that they would probably score because they were controlling the puck and all we did was ice it which gave them another faceoff in our zone. With 14 seconds left of course a one-timer barely got passed Charlie. We headed to overtime. My line started in overtime and we had the puck. It got poked away and I picked it up in the neutral zone. I tried to go around the defense for a shot on goal but they held me to the outside so I had no choice but to circle around the net. I was planning to pass it out to someone who was open out front but I saw halfway around the net the goalie was still hugging the opposite post. I wrapped around and the puck barely got in. It got us the 8-7 OT win to take the 1-0 series lead. Our next game was the next day and I knew we could take the series. We played amazing and held them to only two goals in a 7-2 victory. It should have been 8-2 but one of my goals in that game also didn’t count for some reason which was pretty sad but it didn’t affect the end goal of making provincials which we did, completing the sweep. Our provincials are in Kilarny which is about an hour from Brandon and it is in 2 weeks.

Here is the Hockey Manitoba website.