The Red Deer U15AAA Rebels are scorching to start the Alberta Elite Hockey League season.
Red Deer rolled to a 5-1 victory over the Calgary Royals Saturday and won again 7-1 Sunday over the Calgary Northstars to improve to 9-1 on the year.
Domenik McInenly was solid in net for the Rebels with 41 saves Saturday and three third-period goals powered them to the win.
“We started hard. We came out good and kind of lulled partway through the game. We let up and got into a little bit of penalty trouble,” said Rebels head coach Justin Jarmolicz.
“They took over in the third and really started to push, got pucks in and grinded away. He just started playing harder, it was good.”
Jaxen Smyth and Leim Smith scored in the first, while Lachlan Hanton, Treysen Miller and Tavish Beagle added third-period tallies for the home side. Daxon Rudolph had three assists for Red Deer and Easton Daneault also picked up a pair of helpers.
Sunday, Smyth had a pair of goals and three assists, while Rudolph, Julian Galenza, Tucker Tullikopf, Daneault and Smith all scored. Kyle Beechinor also chipped in three assists, Brody Sharpe picked up two helpers and Adam Jeffries made 17 saves for the victory.
The Rebels now have 46 goals and only 16 against in 10 games this season, something Jarmolicz said they’ve taken pride in right from day 1.
“We have a good work ethic. That’s our big thing. We score by committee for the most part and we’re getting guys to really buy into to defend hard and they have the puck more,” he said.
“Really like that they’ve all bought into what we’re trying to do here and it’s fun to be around. Part of their goal is we want to be a real stingy team, keeping goals against down. We’ve got two excellent goalies, but it’s a team stat too… we’re hard to score on and that’s a good thing.”
Jarmolicz noted the biggest strength of his club this year is their team speed and that’s helped them outpace a lot of the other groups they’ve faced so far.
“Team speed. We’ve got some guys that can really skate and we’ve got heavy shots too. Once we get it sorted out in the offensive zone, we’re going to be just fine,” Jarmolicz added.
byron.hackett@reddeeradvocate.com
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