WESTVILLE ROAD, N.S. –
Underdogs?
The Pictou County Peewee AAA Crushers don’t seem to like that word.
Hosting the five-team Atlantic Peewee AAA championships this coming weekend at the Pictou County Wellness Centre, captain Cade Moser believes his team has a legit shot at winning the whole thing.
“I think we have all the chance in the world if we play our own game,” he said, prior to a recent practice.
“We’ve got to get pucks deep, stay positive even when we’re down. And we’ve just got to put pucks in the net.”
The team went winless in four games at the provincial championship tournament in late March, and Moser, a Linacy resident, was brutally honest when asked to assess what went wrong.
“We turned too many pucks over, we weren’t playing our game, we were selfish with the puck.”
The Crushers were banged up at provincials, and after a heavy workload of games in the month of March, they were somewhat worn out by the time they played at provincials.
“We were beat up and tired – and it showed,” head coach Jeff Green said. “We just didn’t play well.”
But the Crushers now have a second life, a chance to fix what didn’t work in Halifax.
“I can’t wait, Moser said of the experience of hosting the Atlantic championship tournament.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to have, to play in this tournament and I think we’re going to do well.”
Green is confident that his team can be successful, but it won’t be easy.
“We can play with anybody. It’s peewee hockey – some days, some stretches of games, you try to get them to be more consistent (but) I think we can stack up against any of those teams. We need to work hard and we need everybody going, but if we come to play, I think we can make some noise.”
CRUSHERS SCHEDULE
APRIL 4
7 p.m. versus Prince Edward Island (King’s County Kings)
APRIL 5
3 p.m. versus Newfoundland & Labrador (St. John’s Hitmen)
7 p.m. versus Nova Scotia (Bedford Blues)
APRIL 6
1 p.m. versus New Brunswick (Fredericton Canadiens)
Notes:
• Admission is free to all games.
• After the round robin is completed, the top two teams will play for the championship at 1 p.m. on April 7. The third and fourth-place teams will play for bronze that day at 11 a.m.
• The games will be streamed live at: http://360go.live/q2H
Volunteers working behind the scenes
The News
WESTVILLE ROAD – When the Pictou County Peewee AAAA Crushers host the Atlantic championship tournament this weekend, the players will play.
And the parents and other volunteers – close to 40 of them – will continue to work at making sure everything gets done.
“Everybody’s helping in some way,” said Carolyn Steele, who is co-chairing the event along with Jeff Burrows. “We’ve been working on it since before Christmas. I think Jeff and I met for our first sit-down in late November.”
Between obtaining sponsors, setting up team liaisons, creating schedules for parents to work during the games and setting up social media sites, there’s no shortage of things to do.
“Once we drop the puck on Thursday (7 p.m.), that’s when it’s going to be fun,” said Steele, who is also the team manager for the Peewee AAA Crushers.
