The St. Albert Gregg Distributors Sabres have a point to prove against the best of the best at the John Reid Memorial Tournament.
“It’s the biggest tournament of the year and we really want to show that we deserve to be here, not because we’re hosts but that we are a top team in Western Canada,” said captain Jayden Platz.
The 37th annual St. Albert bantam AAA tournament showcases 16 elite teams from across western North America as hordes of junior scouts chart their performances.
“The big thing is you can’t let the nerves get to you. If you do and if you make one bad mistake it can just ruin your whole game and the experience so it’s something we can’t let happen,” said Platz, the only returning Sabre from last year’s 0-4-1 showing.
The Sabres can’t take a shift off if they want to finish with a winning record. The last St. Albert team to accomplish the feat was in 2010 at 3-1-1.
“We said it at the beginning of the year and it’s still a goal for us; we want to win this tournament. We’ve just got to play our game and do it for each other and for our families and go out and do our best as a team,” Platz said.
Pool play will determine which playoff bracket the Sabres will be slotted in. Thursday they face-off against the Winnipeg Warriors, a top-ranked team in Manitoba, at 11 a.m. and the Colorado Thunderbirds, coached by former NHL defenceman and Stanley Cup winner Adam Foote, at 8 p.m. Friday’s game against the 2014 champion Okanagan Hockey Academy of Penticton starts at 2:15 p.m. All three games are at Go Auto Arena.
“Our whole team is really excited. We’ve been preparing for the tournament for the whole year,” said right-winger Garrett Clegg. “We’ve got to play our best hockey of course because we definitely want to come out with a win in the John Reid.”
The 42-game schedule is online at www.johnreidmemorial.com and in the Gazette scoreboard on page 63.
The Sabres (12-11-4) skate into the tournament with two shutout losses in a row before hosting the Canadian Athletic Club (12-12-1) Tuesday in the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League. The score was unavailable at press time.
“We haven’t been playing our best hockey and we want to get back to that for the tournament. (Against CAC) we want to get back into the wins so we can go into the tournament on a good note,” said Clegg, 14, a Grade 9 Vincent J. Maloney School student.
The Sabres were 1-3 in the new year and 2-5-1 overall after going 5-1 as finalists at the Prince Albert tournament in early December. The team’s record in November was 5-2-1.
“Coming back from Prince Albert we were on a high note. We were winning lots of games but right now we’re kind of in a funk. Hopefully we can get all of that out in our next game (against the CAC),” said Platz, 14, a Grade 9 Lorne Akins School student.
The Sabres are a lock to make the playoffs in the nitro north division but hopes of finishing second were dashed in Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the SSAC Southgate Lions (17-8-2), the team they’re chasing in the standings.
“We deserved a better fate out there today. We controlled more of the play. It’s just a tough loss for us,” Platz said. “It’s the little things we need to do to succeed that we’re not doing right now. We’re almost trying a little bit too hard to get out of that funk.”
The Lions capitalized on the power play in the first period and added two empty-net goals in the last 67 seconds.
The Sabres were unable to capitalize on the power play when the Lions were penalized for hooking with 8:55 to play and a four-minute checking to the head infraction with 4:56 remaining.
The Sabres were outshot 25-22 and Colton Girard (5-7-1, 2.87 GAA) was between the pipes.
“We didn’t play a bad game. We had enough chances to win, we’ve just got to start putting pucks in the net,” said Clegg, the team’s top scorer with 20 goals and 31 points in 25 games. “Our forwards just need to pick up their game and start capitalizing on our opportunities because our defencemen are doing their jobs and we have to do our jobs.”
The scoring drought started in the 2-0 loss to the Leduc Oil Kings (20-5-1) Jan. 5 in St. Albert. The Sabres were outshot 34-16 as Mitchell Reidy (7-4-3, 2.58 GAA) stood tall in net.
The day before, Reidy stopped 21 shots for his second shutout and the team’s third of the season in the 6-0 victory over the Lloydminster Heat (10-12-2) in the Border City. Clegg and Brady Nicolas paced the attack with two goals apiece.
“We’re holding our sticks a little bit too tight right now and we’re not burying pucks when we have to,” said Platz, a six-foot-two defenceman who joined Clegg at the AMBHL all-star game Saturday in Calgary.
When the Sabres are clicking they are tough to beat.
“We have a really fast team and when we get the puck in deep we seem to control the play for the most part of the game,” Platz said. “When we use our bodies and start hitting that’s helped us succeed too.”
