One shoots left and the other is a righty but together the Savoie brothers are double trouble offensively for the St. Albert Gregg Distributors Sabres.
Carter Savoie is a left winger with 49 points and Matt Savoie, a centre, racked up 25 goals in 24 games before Tuesday’s home tilt against the SSAC Southgate Lions.
Carter, 14, was tied for seventh in the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League scoring race and his 19 goals in 24 games was fourth best on the Sabres.
“He’s a great passer. He can find guys when most players actually can’t. He’s got great vision,” said Matt of his older brother. “He’s pretty quick, good on the cycle and he’s got a good shot.”
Last season Carter was the second-leading scorer on the bantam AA St. Albert Blues with 23 goals and 49 points in 31 games.
Matt, who turned 13 on New Year’s Day, shared 12th spot with 44 points as the fourth-highest scoring Sabre at the Christmas break.
“He’s fast and he can beat lots of players one on one. He has good hands and good vision and good hockey sense,” said Carter said of his peewee-age brother. “He’s one of the big reasons why we’re successful. He’s a big part of our team.”
Playing on the same team as his brother is a big deal for Matt.
“It’s really good. I’m learning things from him,” said Matt, who skated on a line combination with Carter for a spell early in the season.
And what was Carter’s best advice?
“Probably just keep working to get to your goal and keep improving,” said Matt, who cracked the bantam AAA lineup after last season’s stint with the peewee AA St. Albert Stars.
“It’s good knowing that I can play at the level,” Matt added. “It’s about getting better by giving me a tougher challenge in bantam. It’s faster pace with body contact.”
The Richard S. Fowler School students have Team Brick experience at the Brick Invitational – Carter in 2012 and Matt in 2014 – as novice players and Carter was also a member of the gold-medal winning peewee AA St. Albert Sabres at the 2015 Quebec Peewee International Hockey Tournament.
In the final, Carter’s dramatic penalty shot 24 seconds into overtime was the 2-1 winner against the Brandon Wheat Kings at Quebec Pepsi Coliseum.
“They covered the puck in the crease so I was a little nervous when they said I was shooting but then I scored so I was really excited,” Carter said. “It was a great experience to just be there. There was lots of fans in the stadium.”
The next major tournament for the Savoie brothers is the John Reid Memorial, Jan. 19 to 22 at Servus Credit Union Place.
“It’s going to be fun playing in the John Reid and against all those good teams,” Matt said. “We have to be ready and prepared both physically and mentally because every team is good, like all the school teams that we don’t usually get to play against. We don’t know what they play like so we have to be ready for anything.”
In the Kal-Tire division of the John Reid pool, the Sabres have games scheduled at Go Auto Arena on Jan. 19 against the Okanagan Hockey Academy of Edmonton at 10:45 a.m. and the Colorado T-Birds at 8 p.m. and Jan. 20 against the Yale Hockey Academy of Abbotsford at 2:30 p.m.
The Skybox Grill division in the Reid pool features the Calgary Bisons, Fort Saskatchewan Rangers, Notre Dame Hounds and Toronto Marlboros.
In the Jarome Iginla pool, the C2 Homes division consists of the Pursuit of Excellence Academy of Kelowna, Red Deer Rebels, Rink Hockey Academy of Winnipeg and Rocky Mountain Roughriders of Colorado and the Remax-Brian Cyr division teams are the Burnaby Winter Club Bruins, Delta Hockey Academy Wild, Lethbridge Golden Hawks and Phoenix Jr. Coyotes.
The last three tournament winners were academy teams: Yale last year, Delta in 2015 and the Okanagan Hockey Academy of Penticton in 2014.
At the Rocky Mountain Classic in November, the Sabres lost 5-4 in the playoff round to Yale, the tournament winner. They also fell 11-3 to the Pursuit of Excellence and beat the Okanagan academy of Penticton 2-1 and Notre Dame Hounds 6-1 during a 3-2 overall showing at the Calgary event.
“They’re good but we’re also good. If we show our best game I believe we can beat them on any given night,” Carter said of the academy teams. “The crowd will be on our side at the tournament so that will be a little bit of a positive.”
The Sabres were a razor-sharp 22-1-1 as the No. 1 team in league play before hosting SSAC (3-18-4) but the score was unavailable at press time.
“We’ve been pretty strong throughout the whole year. We’re a pretty tight group and we work well together,” Matt said. “We’ve been working pretty hard on and off the ice. We have a strong team physically and mentally.”
The Sabres were unbeaten in 19 games before the stunning 5-0 setback to the Calgary Flames (9-9-6) Dec. 11 despite out-shooting the visitors 41-34.
“We weren’t prepared as we should’ve been,” Matt said. “They skated the whole game which we weren’t used to because we would usually wear teams out in the first and second periods and they stayed consistent throughout the whole game.”
The fourth win a row after the loss was 3-2 against Fort Saskatchewan (19-4-1), the top team in the Charger north standings, Dec. 22 in St. Albert.
“It was a good game to get us a little bit ready for the John Reid. They’re one of the better teams in our league so it helped us out,” said Carter, who sniped his 19th goal to knot the score at one in the middle frame.
After Tuesday’s game the Nitro north division Sabres have 11 remaining before the playoffs start.
“We’re just trying to get better every day,” said Carter, a Grade 9 student. “It’s our little details like stopping on pucks and chipping pucks out that have been pretty good lately but I think they can still improve.
“We just need to keep on working hard in practice and if not work harder and then keep on with the success and keep on building to get to our goals of winning John Reid and winning the league.”
The last St. Albert bantam AAA team to achieve playoff success was the 1999 Sabres as the league and provincial champions and third-place finishers at westerns.
“We have been working hard to get to a good spot to be a higher seed in playoffs so that we’ll get a little bit of an easier route but we still have to work hard because every team will not be taking us lightly so we have to prepare ourselves for every single game,” said Matt, a Grade 7 student.
Saturday the Sabres visit the Leduc Oil Kings (6-16-4) at 2:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, Carter is among five Sabres selected to the 27th annual bantam AAA all-star game Jan. 14 in Okotoks. The netminding tandem of Ethan Barwick and Kyle Nelson, forward Ethan Leyer and captain Mike Benning on defence will join their teammate and the Sabres’ coaching staff on the north squad.
