Photo: Mr. Green
The Northwood Huskies Junior hockey team recently swept the competition in the highly anticipated annual event, the Northwood Invitational. They went 5 and 0 on the weekend, showcasing their high powered offense for the first time in front of a home crowd. The Junior team, up to that point, hadn’t had any home games, and were eager to play in front of friends, family, faculty, and Northwood alumni.
When asked about how the home ice advantage helped the huskies along the way through the physically gruelling weekend, left winger Jack Dugan responded, “It was great to finally play at home…we had a long stretch of road games and seeing everyone in the crowd got our guys going.” Jack was one of the stars of the weekend for the huskies, and was named to the all-tournament team after the final game, in which the Huskies edged out St. Foy 2 to 1 in double overtime. Scoring the sudden death-goal for the Huskies was Kaden Pickering off of a brilliant assist from Aleksi Peltonen, who recorded 2 points in the final. Aleksi was awarded player of the game for his efforts. Mattias Samuelsson earned the title of Tournament MVP, with a dominating performance in all 5 games. After the game he told us “I feel honored to be awarded MVP at such a young age,” he continued to say “a lot of great players have won this award in the past, and it’s a great feeling to be apart of that group.”
A huge part of Northwood’s success comes from their ability to play four lines. Their depth allows them to stay more energized throughout the game than their opponents, who usually try to run three against the strong Northwood squad. Senior Hayden Hart said “the reason we won was because we wore down St. Foy…by overtime they were tired and we weren’t, and we knew we had to take advantage of that.”
The Junior Team’s current record is 34 and 4, and are currently preparing for another home weekend against the Islanders Hockey Club as they look to improve their record.
