Blackfalds Wranglers head coach Brian Lenz was in awe of his players during the championship game of the Western Canada junior B hockey championship Sunday afternoon at Sherwood Park.
And he was impressed with the host Knights, as well. Both teams put fatigue in the back of their minds in a fast-paced final that saw Blackfalds get a third-period goal from David Jantzie and a 49-save effort from Tanner Schalin in a 2-1 win over the tournament hosts.
“It was a tough weekend. When you play five games in three days, that’s a lot of hockey,” said Lenz, the long-time Wranglers bench boss. “I was pretty amazed that both teams could come out and play the way they did on Sunday.
“It was a fast game with end-to-end action. Both teams should have been a lot more tired than they were.”
In the end, the Wranglers had a little extra in the tank, plus they had a red-hot Schalin between the pipes.
“That last part of the (Heritage League) playoffs he kind of got in a groove and from there he was good all the way through,” Lenz said of his netminder.
The Keystone Cup championship is the first for the Wranglers, who four years ago won the Alberta title while based out of Lacombe but were unable to attend the Westerns when the Heritage League decided not to send a team.
Karson French also scored for the Wranglers in Sunday’s final, erasing a 1-0 deficit with a second-period goal.
The victory capped a roller-coaster season for Blackfalds, which lost to the Red Deer Vipers in the second round of the Heritage League playoffs, but as the co-winner of the league’s regular-season title was granted a semifinal berth since the HJBHL has only three conferences.
The Wranglers eventually fell to the Okotoks Bisons in the league championship series, but gained automatic entry to the provincial championship tournament at Leduc, where they beat the defending champion Beaumont Chiefs 2-1 in the final.
Blackfalds was 4-1-0 in round-robin play at the Keystone Cup.
“I’m proud of the boys, they did very well,” said Lenz.
“They gave us everything they could possibly give us.”
gmeachem@www.reddeeradvocate.com