The Yorkton Xerox Terriers competed in the most prestigious Bantam AA/AAA tournament in the province this past weekend, traveling to Regina to take part in the 30th annual Graham Tuer Bantam AA Challenge.
While there the Xerox Terriers competed in and won seven games, four in the round-robin and three more in the playoffs.
The Xerox Terriers opened the tournament up on Thursday morning against their league nemesis the Prairie Storm and easily quelled the Storm, beginning round-robin play with a convincing 9-0 win. Zach McIntyre had two goals and two assists to lead the way while Ryder Korczak had two goals and one assist. Jackson Berezowski, Josh Herman, Colby Vranai and Massen Ziola all had one goal and one assist each, while Kishaun Gervais had one goal.
Their next opponent was Manitoba鈥檚 Northern Knights. The Knights opened the scoring early on with a goal by Matthew Smith, however seven of the next eight goals were scored by the Terriers for a 7-2 result. McIntyre and Ethan Evanovich both had two goals in the game while Carson Dereniwsky, Aiden Bulych and Vranai all had singles in the win.
Friday morning saw the Xerox Terriers continue their winning ways, this time dropping the Manitoba Bantam 鈥楢AA鈥� 麻豆传媒AVwest Cougars with a 6-4 win. Bulych, McIntyre, Berezowski, Herman, Korczak and Gervais all tallied in the win.
That victory set up an all-important final round-robin game for the Terriers against the also undefeated Prince Albert Venice House Raiders with the winner moving on to the playoff round.
Yorkton came out strong, scoring a pair of goals in both the first and second period before allowing just one goal in the third period in a 4-1 win. Korczak had two in the game for the Xerox Terriers while Berezowski and Evanovich pitched in with one goal each.
The win gave the Xerox Terriers a 4-0 record through round-robin and placed them in the quarterfinals against the 3-1 Regina Pat Blues on Halloween Saturday. The Xerox Terriers tricked the Pat Blues all game long and treated themselves to four unanswered goals, one each by Bulych, Berezowski, Ziola and Gervais, in a 4-0 quarterfinal shutout win that propelled them to the semi-finals where they met the Sask Valley Vipers.
The Vipers had rolled through their competition until that point, however the Terriers managed to send the snakes packing, handing Sask Valley a 4-3 semi-final defeat.聽 Statistics were unavailable as of press time.
The final game of the tournament pitted Yorkton against last year鈥檚 champions from Manitoba, the Bantam 鈥楢AA鈥� Yellowhead Chiefs.
A hattrick by Zach McIntyre and solid goaltending from Second Team All-Star Nolan Maier proved to be more than enough as the Xerox Terriers clinched their third Graham Tuer title in team history and second in the last three years with a 6-3 win.
Following the trophy presentation, Xerox Terrier head coach Dan Cross said he was amazed at how well his team played throughout the four day, seven game tournament. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 even explain it. To get the energy to keep on going is amazing,鈥� offered Cross. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e young and they recover quick and that鈥檚 really a big thing in this tournament; the nutrition and stamina of a team.
鈥淲hich team is the most fit and can outlast everyone, well that鈥檚 the team that usually wins it and you could see that they definitely deserved to be the champions this weekend.鈥�
Cross also said that the depth of his team is one of the main reasons why they ultimately came out on top. 鈥淥ur depth works to our advantage in a tournament like this because we can just roll our three lines and all three lines can produce for us. I think that鈥檚 an advantage that we have over every other team.
鈥淭hey can鈥檛 key on one line and any of our lines can bury someone in a game and it showed this weekend where every game we had a different line producing for us.鈥�
Now the Xerox Terriers will turn their attention back to regular season play, where they currently lead the SBAAHL 麻豆传媒AV Division with a 7-1-0 record, although Cross admits that it will be a little while before the team will be back to playing 100% after a tournament like this. 鈥淚t will probably take us a couple of weeks to get over this weekend physically, but in the long-term I think that it will be very good for us to know that we can compete and we can win when we have to,鈥� said Cross. 鈥淭hat knowledge will only help us the rest of the season and into the playoffs.鈥�
The Xerox Terriers (7-1-0) will host the Saskatoon Stallions (3-3-1) in their first league game after their Graham Tuer success on Saturday, November 7. Game time is set for 4:00p.m. at the Yorkton Kinsmen Arena.
