The Cochrane Chaos breezed through the third annual Alberta Female Junior Hockey League (AFJHL) Western Showcase tournament this past weekend going undefeated and besting the team that beat them in the league championship.
The Chaos, who were hosting the tournament for the first time this year, won the tournament after going undefeated through the round robin, upending the Manitoba Gray Owls, the North Midget Selects team and the Fort Saskatchewan Fury to set up a semi-final show down with the Sherwood Park Steele, the team who beat the Chaos in three straight games in the AJFHL Championship series.
The Chaos were down 3-1 against their newly-found rivals late in the game, but scored two goals with the extra attacker to tie the contest and send it to a shootout. Chaos goalie Megan Parkyn stopped two Steele chances while Cochrane’s shooters scored on two of their three attempts, which sent the Chaos to the championship final against the Calgary Titans.
The final was a nailbiter, tied 2-2 after 40 minutes. Summer Gibbons scored the go-ahead goal in the third to put the home side ahead and Emily Straw, a call up midget player, tallied an insurance marker late in the game to give the Chaos a 4-2 lead. Calgary fought back with a goal to come within one but the Chaos were able to hold off the Titans to claim tournament championship.
Chaos head coach Derek Loomer said he was pleased with how his team played throughout the duration of the tournament adding that beating the Steele helped ease a bit of the pain caused by losing to them in the league championship series.
Eight teams participated in over the weekend divided into two pools including the league champion Sherwood Park Steele, Fort Saskatchewan Fury, the Manitoba Gray Owls, two teams from Calgary as well as two graduating midget teams that are formed of players divided into Northern and Southern Alberta teams from the Alberta Female Hockey League (AFHL).
“I thought the tournament was a huge way for us to finish the year. We obviously were very disappointed with the results of the Sherwood Park series … not the way we played, but the hockey gods just didn’t smile on us to get that one goal-per-game to help us win that series instead of lose it,” Loomer said.
“It was nice to come back, play in a tournament and be together like that for one more weekend on the ice and have the success we did. All in all it was hugely successful and enjoyable for us.”
“As for the Sherwood Park game, being able to beat them in the semis was certainly better than losing to them again. But you know it’s still different because it’s a tournament. We were really happy to get through that game and make the finals but I think next year in the playoffs if we were able to win would be true retribution in my mind, if we get past that loss because it was quite disappointing.”
With this being the first time Cochrane has hosted the Western Showcase tournament, there was a lot of unknowns about how it might turn out, but Loomer said he thought the weekend as a whole was very well organized and turned out better than expected.
“There seemed to be a lot of energy in the building and a lot of traffic that went through. The teams all played well, the games were all competitive and reasonably close in score,” Loomer said.
“The two midget teams that showed up played very hard and (we) got a chance to look at those future prospects. It’s encouraging to see because it means our game is getting better and hopefully a number of those players will end up in our league in the future.”
“The volunteers were spectacular. The hours they put in to pull this off and make everyone that was there to enjoy the weekend … it was really great to see.”
Despite the season ending, Loomer and his coaching staff will be hosting a spring camp in the coming weeks and will slowly start to prepare for next season.
“It’s really early but we got a few girls that we know will be moving on. Our goaltender Megan Parkyn is one of those girls, she’s an over-aged player now and she’s been our goalie for the past couple seasons. It’s really tough for her because she loves this sport and I think she really enjoyed being part of the Chaos organization as a player and I think it’s going to be really sad to see her move on. There’s a few other girls that have other commitments that is making it harder to come back next year … so we could lose around four to nine players depending on how everything goes,” Loomer said.
“We’ll have those conversations in the next few weeks to see where everybody is … we’ve gotten a lot of interest from girls who are graduating out of midget that would love to come and play in our program.”
“We have our spring camp upcoming here in the next few weeks, so it’ll be a good chance to get those girls out, see them in that environment and have conversations with them to find those girls that will fill in where those gaps (in our team) arise and fit in with our program.”
The Chaos will host their spring camp April 27 and 28.
