The St. Albert Gregg Distributors Sabres are prepping for the post-season as the host team for the John Reid Memorial Tournament.
“These teams are better than the AMBHL teams so it will bring us together as a team and make us work a lot more harder for the rest of the regular season and when we get into the playoffs,” said Michael Romeo, a centre/right-winger with the 8-12-4 Sabres in the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League.
Nine games remain for the Sabres in league play before the best-of-three nitro north division semifinals start.
“Our team has a big motivation about the playoffs. We’re looking to do really well in it,” Romeo said.
The Sabres started off the 41st annual St. Albert bantam AAA tournament Thursday with the 6-4 loss to the Burnaby Winter Club Academy Bruins and 6-3 win over the Los Angeles Kings at Go Auto Arena.
Friday the Sabres played the Yale Hockey Academy Lions of Abbotsford in the team’s last game in the Canadian Brewhouse division of the John Reid pool. The score was unavailable at press time.
The playoff rounds in the A, B and C brackets for the 16 teams are underway today and wrap up Sunday at Servus Credit Union Place.
Visit www.johnreidmemorial.com for the tournament playoff schedule.
Last year’s Sabres posted a 1-2 mark for third place in their division before going 1-1 in the B playoff bracket.
Splitting the first day of the this year’s tournament was a good sign for the Sabres.
“It’s nice to have a good game like that to play first because we know it’s going to be like that all tournament,” said centre Ryan Arnold after the loss to Burnaby and Los Angeles on tap that night as the feature game after the opening ceremonies. “It will be a good game, a close game. We’ll have to work hard to win that one.”
Goals by Carmelo Crandell and Connor Dale and timely saves by Luke Roberts resulted in a 2-1 lead after the first period against the Kings.
Matteo Fabrizi, captain Levi Fesyk and Zakk Makeiff made it 5-2 in the second and Makeiff’s fourth goal of the tournament was potted on the power play in the third.
Crandell also added two assists.
Shots were 37-34 for the Kings, the 2018 tournament finalists.
The opening game for the Sabres featured tying goals by Marko Stolic and Makeiff in the first before Burnaby closed out the period with a penalty shot to regain the lead at 3-2 with 2:16 to go.
It was 5-3 Burnaby when Liam Cochrane threaded the needle with 5:06 left in the middle frame.
Makeiff scored the only goal of the third as the game ended with the shots 45-35 for Burnaby, including a 21-8 advantage in the second, as netminder Teagan Kendrick drew the start for the Sabres.
Cochrane and Ben Belyea finished with two assists apiece.
“We started in the first period working as a five-man unit and then we started slowly drifting away and then we got back together as a five-man unit in the third, " Romeo said. “We could’ve had it if we stuck together for the three periods.”
The stands were packed with hyped-up elementary school students, an annual tradition for the 10:45 a.m. Thursday tournament lid-lifter for the Sabres.
“I’m pretty sure we had a little bit of butterflies in the stomach, especially seeing how many people were out there,” Romeo said. “We had a team meal (Wednesday) and I was saying to one of my buddies, Marko Stolic, ‘Remember in Grade 3 when we were sitting in the stands watching them and how big those guys were and now tomorrow we’re playing in it.’”
It’s a major accomplishment to make the Sabres’ roster with the St. Albert tournament heavily scouted by Western Hockey League teams leading up to the bantam draft in May.
“I’ve always wanted to play on this team. It’s great,” said Arnold, 13, one of eight first-year bantam Sabres.
As for the Sabres counting down the days leading up to the tournament, “We did that but we also tried to focus on the now by focusing on our league games,” said Arnold, who has generated four goals and six assists in 22 games.
The third win in a row while going undefeated in four games was Sunday’s 9-2 blowout of CAC Lehigh Cement at Akinsdale Arena.
“It was really important especially beating them by quite a bit. It gave us a lot of momentum to move forward into this tournament,” Arnold said. “And this tournament will give us some momentum going into league play. It’s better teams to play against and when we get back to league play we’ll know what good hockey is like.”
The offensive outburst lifted the Sabres seven points ahead of the fifth-place CAC (6-19-1) with two games in hand while bridging the gap on the third-place SSAC Southgate Lions (10-12-3) with an extra game advantage.
“It knocked CAC right down back to the bottom and really brought us closer to Southside,” said Romeo, who registered his 10th goal and 14th point in 24 games in the lopsided result. “It would be great if we could get up to Southside and pass them.”
The top four teams in the nitro standings qualify for the playoffs.
“We have to just play as a team and keep going,” said Arnold, a Grade 8 Richard S. Fowler student. “We’re getting pucks to the net, we’re shooting more, we’re playing more as a team defensively and we’re blocking shots.”
Romeo, 14, credited teamwork for the turnaround from the 1-8-3 start by the 2018 AMBHL provincial finalists.
“We were going really slow and everyone was just on their own, but now in the dressing room we’re all together as a team and it’s very exciting,” sad the Grade 9 William D. Cuts student.
The next league game is Wednesday versus the Maple Leafs (3-20-1) at 7:45 p.m. at Akinsdale Arena.
