A Fantastic Opening Weekend of Junior ‘A’ Hockey

Summerland Jets and Osoyoos Coyotes won their home game openers; a huge success to kick off the new BCHC which is the Junior ‘A’ British Columbia Hockey Conference.

Friday night in Summerland almost 800 fans attended the opening game of the new league and a welcome back to the arena after a massive fire the previous month put all of Summerland on evacuation notice.

This game belonged to the Jets as the Coyotes finally got untracked in the third period but the Jets had built a 3 to 1 lead as Ollie Reid scored his first Junior goal for the Coyotes in the 2nd period and Mason Rudoph scored with 4 minutes remaining to make it a close game but that was all the scoring and the Jets outshot the Coyotes 39 to 33.

The scene switched back to Osoyoos for the Coyotes home opener and 521 watched the opening game which is the biggest crowd since the playoffs in the first year of the Coyotes in 2011.

This game started with the puck going into the Coyote end when Russell Weatherhead took the puck from behind his net, fed it up the left wing to John Hadden who then put it on Jevyn Gill’s stick who fired it home and at 18 seconds, it was the game winning goal. To my knowledge, it is the fastest goal scored in any league play in Osoyoos and it was a game winner as well.

Weatherhead made it 2 to 0 on a power play when he scorched a shot into the top left corner of the net from the blue-line. It remained 2 to 0, until midway through the 2nd period when the roof caved in on the Jets. The coyotes whipped in 4 goals in a span of 2 minutes and 11 seconds.

Julian Galenza got his first of the night on a power play with a shot to the upper corner at 12:26; then Mason Rudolph scored unassisted from in front of the goal at 13:50 followed by Isaac Tavinder at 14:37 with his first goal set up by his older brother Quinn and Ollie Reid; and a mere 13 second later at the 15 minute mark Julian Galenza got his second goal and then Julian scored his hat-trick goal with 4:10 to go in the game.

That is when it got interesting as the Jets wanted to erase the shut-out bid by Coyote goaltender Sam Koester and he was tested about 4 times from close-in and made 3 diving saves which prompted a bit of a dust-up behind the net of pushing, shoving, and naughty words at close range while Koester kept his cool.

Despite the seven-goal margin, the Coyotes’ forecheck in the Jets’ zone proved decisive, preventing the visitors from organizing their attack. It also helped the Coyotes kill off a 1:54 of two men short in the second period and keep the Jets grounded.

This coming weekend, the Coyotes are on the road for a game with the Border Bruins in Grand Forks, then a pair of home games the following week with Beaver Valley here on Friday October 2, and Williams Lake on Saturday October 3, with a 6:50pm start for both encounters.