PAIMFC tournament doubles in gold

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This year?s edition of the annual Prince Albert Indian Metis Friendship Centre Aboriginal hockey tournament saw twice the action, as well as twice the amount of hardware handed out to the participating teams. The tournament not only had Senior men?s competition, but Novice hockey as well. Organizers were pleased with the turn-out at both levels.

?For the first year (with Novice competition), yes, we were pleased,? said Joe Watson, one of the organizers of the weekend.

?We tried for eight (Novice) teams, and lost three the day of cutoff due to the winter game tryouts for the south. We ended up with five, which was very, very good. The parents and the people enjoyed it, and I?m happy with it myself.?

Ron Fiddler, another one of the organizers, concurred.

?There were some from out of town, and there was one from the Prince Albert area. We?re hoping to get some more teams from the area and from out of town, of course. Maybe we might even expand it to a larger number of teams next year.?

The winners of the Novice competition were the Prince Albert Blades, coached by Leo Arcand.

?It was good, with the teams that did show up. The kids enjoyed themselves, and played a lot of hockey,? Arcand said.

The final for the Novice category was sandwiched between the Senior?s B-side final and the tournament championship, which Leo Arcand did not seem to mind in the least.

?I think it?s excellent. A big crowd like this before the final (adults?) game, and it gives the Seniors the rest they need before the big game.?

In the Senior men?s category, the purse was increased to $12,000, which might have been a motivation for more adult teams to participate.

?The adult side was awesome,? Watson said. ?For the first time in four years, we had a full draw for our Senior tournament. It was good.?

The B-side final in the men?s action was the most exciting game of the tournament, decided in an overtime shootout between the OCN Blues and the Opaw Stars. Before the shootout began, there was an exchange of fisticuffs between players from the two teams. The melee resulted in players from both teams being ejected from the game.

The final score of the shoot-out wound up favoring the Stars 7-6, and they faced the Muskeg Lake Blades in the tournament final.

An emergency stoppage late in the first period of the final wound up swinging the momentum in favor of the Blades, when Stars goaltender Darwin Morin had to be taken out after having a diabetic attack on the ice.

The Blades took full advantage of the stoppage, winning the championship by a score of 11 to 3.

?The final game was kind of more or less a recreational hockey game because there was actually no legs left for our Stars players,? said Stars head coach Darrel McCallum.

?(We) played four games today, and Muskeg Lake knows that we could have had a good game with them when we had our legs, but unfortunately today, it didn?t work out that way.

?Probably three of our games were some of the most exciting ones the people had to see here today,? McCallum added.

Wally Wuttunee, a former University of Saskatchewan Huskie who was playing for the Muskeg Lake Blades, could also see the shift in momentum.

?After that goalie had that incident, it was pretty much over right there. They were kind of tired. We took it to them right off the start, right though the whole game.?

George Arcand, head coach of the Muskeg Lake Stars, said he was ?pretty happy with the guys.?

?A couple of weeks ago, we weren?t sure whether we were going to put it together. We got some young guys who came up and called us. Guys like (Robbie) Boisson.?

Robbie Boisson, another ex-Huskie, earned the title of tournament MVP, which baffled the young player.

?I didn?t score a goal all weekend,? Boisson said.

?I think the PA Indian Metis Friendship Center deserves real applause for they type of hockey they brought here this weekend. I think a lot of fans enjoyed this, and hey?re pretty happy,? George Arcand said.