By Robb Fenton
While the Lloydminster Bandits fell two wins short of another provincial title, the team has nothing to hang their heads out.
The provincial tournament, which was held at Peace River, had some ups and downs, but overall, it was a weekend to be proud of for head coach Joe Young and the rest of the team.
“The guys played hard. That’s a tough championship to win, you’re playing some really good teams in a provincial tournament and we just wanted to give ourselves the opportunity at the end of the day to get to that semi-final game and see what happened from there,” Young said. “At the end of it, I’m really happy for the guys, everybody played extremely hard. We should be proud of ourselves.”
While it didn’t end up the way they wanted, the Bandits were able to repeat as NEAJBHL champions and advance to their third straight provincial tournament and at least had the opportunity to defend their title, which was the goal from Day 1.
“That was the main thing from the start, you always want to defend the championship and make someone else work to get it. Going into provincials we had a good feeling good things might happen, but to go back-to-back in something like this is extremely difficult,” Young pointed out. “Every year teams are retooling and getting better, so we were in a battle right from the start.”
The Bandits went 1-0-2 in the round robin with a 5-2 win and two 3-3 ties and advanced to the semi-finals thanks to a lot of grit and heart.
Lenny Young tipped in a point shot by Reed Simonar to give the Bandits the tie in the third game against the host North Peace Navigators to finish second in their pool and move on to the playoffs.
“We didn’t lose a game in the round robin which I was proud of and that third game where we came back with 57 seconds left to give us a chance in the semis showed all the character and resilience our team has,” Young explained.
After the emotional game where the Bandits earned the tie and moved on to the semi-finals, the team seemed to run out of gas, and while they competed hard, they didn’t have that extra jump they usually do.
“I just think in the semi-final game, we ran out of legs. We didn’t seem to have that much jam in our game, but when you play two games in one day in junior hockey, that’s a tough task in itself,” Young said. “We really had to battle against Peace River to get that point and a lot of the guys played a ton and there wasn’t a whole lot left in the tank for the semi-final game.”
While Young was head coach, he said he had great people around him helping him out.
From general manager Dean Stark, to assistant coaches Del MacEwan, Jason Newman and Brandon Schesnuk and trainer Joy Tremblay, Young said it was a pleasure to be part of the 2009-2010 Bandits team.
“The way we turned it around it just shows how much class and character our guys have. It seemed like once we came back after the New Year we had a couple thoughts in line of what we wanted to accomplish and we were fortunate to accomplish one of those things,” Young said, referring to the league title. “Overall I really enjoyed being around the team, it was a great bunch of guys, we never had any problems. From the board, working with Dean, it was just amazing, they are a great bunch of people and it made the year a lot of fun for everybody.”