PICTOU – Over the weekend in Canning the Pictou Maripacs midget B team walked over the competition en route to their third straight provincial banner.
They opened the weekend with a 4-2 victory against Eastern Shore and didn’t slow down from there. Friday night they dropped Clare 6-2 before a huge 8-0 victory Saturday morning against the host, Acadia. With three wins they punched their ticket to the final, but still had one more game remaining in the round-robin against the Westville Miners.
The Maripacs shutout the Miners 3-0. The final would be a rematch against Westville on Sunday morning.
In the final the Maripacs had another shutout victory, 5-0, to capture the provincial banner.
“We didn’t want to take any team for granted over the weekend and even after beating Westville in the round-robin we knew Sunday would be a completely different game and that we’d need to bring our ‘a’ game,” said Brandon Scanlan.
On the championship team were five members that won all three banners - a midget A banner in 2010-11 (were moved up to midget A) and two midget B banners (2011-12 and 2012-13).
Jethro Gunn, Scanlan, Justin Cameron, Blake Robertson and David Heighton will no longer be playing midget hockey, but have the bragging rights of winning all three.
“It definitely puts the cherry on top of my time in midget knowing we were the best team for three years,” said Roberston.
Cameron said once the team won their first one that the team expected to win the next two.
“Our goal was to win provincials this year and last year and we felt that we had a team that worked well together and worked hard game in and game out,” he said. “This year we showed that again.”
Gunn echoed his teammates feelings on three banners.
“This is pretty awesome for sure,” he said. “It’s not every day that you get the opportunity to win three banners or to be at provincials that many times at one level. To be a part of it was great.”
