A new era in playground hockey

Posted by Sudbury Northern Life  There are still those who recall a time when playground hockey was the place where aspiring young athletes first developed.

Posted by Sudbury Northern Life 

There are still those who recall a time when playground hockey was the place where aspiring young athletes first developed.

A time when the playground league was more than 100 teams strong, and when the between period break allowed for youngsters to huddle back inside the shack, trying to restore blood flow to shivering extremities. A time when parents jumped the snowbank-topped, rink-side boards, shovels in hand, to perform the duties now left to the modern-day Zamboni.

A time when it was not unusual for future NHLers to be first introduced to the sport at one of the countless volunteer-run associations, that dotted the Sudbury sports landscape.

This past weekend, the SPHL, currently in their 57th year of operation, hosted their annual Mayor's Cup Tournament. While the event is essentially an in-house competition, it certainly did not diminish the intensity of the battles along the way, including some memorable finishes in the playoff round.

Sunday's championship affairs kicked off with one of the weekend's most exciting games as Riverdale's Kurtis Brisebois scored with just one second remaining in regulation time, to send the Atom final to overtime. He followed that up by netting his sixth goal of the game, with the teams playing two-on-two hockey (third overtime period), lifting Riverdale past the Algonquin Hawks 6-5.

Nico Presot answered with a hat trick in a losing cause, with Anthony Zanetti and Jonathan Zanini picking up one goal apiece for the Hawks. In the Novice age grouping, the Westmount Wolverines survived the drama of a 1-0 double overtime victory in semi-final play, advancing to face the Algonquin Hawks in the gold-medal encounter.

This time around, they left nothing to chance, bolting out to a 3-0 lead and peppering Hawks' netminder Mitchel Cleaver throughout the contest in chalking up the shutout win. Mathieu Landry, the goal-scoring hero from the morning's semi-final, was joined on the score sheet by Nicholas Marcoux and Steven Sagle in the final.

It was an interesting battle in the Peewee title tilt, as the regular season's top two teams - Lo-Ellen and Long Lake - were sent to the sidelines in semi-final play, leaving Cedar Park and Riverdale to battle it out for all the marbles.

Steven Vaillancourt drilled a pair of goals, with singles coming from Perez Beaupre and Connor Napoli as Riverdale earns a second championship, dumping the Red Wings 4-1.

Riley Waugh broke the shutout bid for Cedar Park. And while the Barrie Knights may have sent just one team up for this year's tournament, the Bantam squad made the most of their trek to the Nickel City, defeating Long Lake 3-1 in the championship final. Francesco Morriello, John Luscombe Jr. and Alex Mucci potted one goal each in the win, with Erik Duhamel responding with the only Long Lake goal.

Odds and ends

What are the odds? The likelihood of having a pair of Sudbury-born athletes recognized as Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) athletes of the week during the same time period is a long-shot at best. But when the pair are also both goaltenders, having grown up no more than five to ten minutes apart - well that's an aligning of the stars I'm sure we'll seldom see.

Jamie Tessier (Windsor Lancers) and Danny Battochio (St. Francis Xavier) were selected simultaneously, based on their performances last weekend, as the post-Christmas hockey schedules kicked up into high gear.

Tessier, a graduate of Lockerby Composite, enjoyed a game to remember, kicking out 68 saves in a 1-0 overtime loss to the country's third ranked Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks. Battochio, who played a couple of seasons with the Sudbury Northern Wolves before rising to prominence with the Ottawa 67's, chalked up a pair of shutouts over a three-game span.

Former Sudbury Lady Wolves' star  and Horizon graduate Micheline Frappier was named as the College Hockey America (CHA) Rookie of the Week earlier this month. After assisting on a game-winning goal against St. Cloud State, the freshman forward with the Wayne State Warriors scored a pair of goals in a 3-3 tie with North Dakota.