Anyone keeping track of the year-to-year happenings of the Junior 'A' Yorkton Terriers hockey club had a pretty good idea of all that could have taken place this past Sunday evening. The Farrell Agencies Arena (and the lobby outside of it) were jam packed.
Allthough the lineups for the men's bathroom weren't that bad, the game that night had the makings in place for a repeat of what went on down there pretty close to one year ago to the date.
The LaRonge Ice Wolves were the opponent again.
The score was close again.
The attendance was almost the same again and even the rosters weren't all that different.
But this time the celebrating was all done by the players in orange and black.
The other thing that was different was some of the players that rose to the occasion. As in any Game 7, you need a couple of things to go well for you. A couple of plays or players that definitely make a difference.
One of those players was Yorkton's number 17 Clarke Breitkreuz. It's too bad none of us got to see him play in this week's Game 7, which was slated for last night in LaRonge, because he sure looked like he really wanted to play in it, badly.
With the Terriers taking a loss two nights earlier in LaRonge, where Breitkreuz scored his first beautiful goal of this series, it all came down to Sunday night.
The product of Springside, Saskatchewan lit 'em up like a Christmas tree, again, on a coast-to-coast rush resulting in a 1-0 Terrier lead in the second period. Nobody even touched him.
The 1800+ people in attendance Sunday night clearly approved. So would TSN's SportsCentre.
He then tied the game with five minutes left in the third frame to give the homeside a legitimate shot at overtime as well as playing in a seventh and deciding game.
He also scored a dandy two nights earlier in Game 5 at LaRonge. Nobody touched him there, either.
Devin Peters also came up big when he had to. He faced 31 shots in the game and was there when his team needed him to be.
He also stopped a breakaway attempt with the Wolves up 3-1. A fourth LaRonge goal with under 10 to go and the game is over for all intents and purposes.
LaRonge had at least 10 shots in each period and he did not look shakey or too nervous.
Peters' teammate Zak Majkowski took advantage of a Yorkton powerplay and brought the team to within one goal of tying it and Craig Eisenhut was in the right spot at the right time to ensure the series would head back up north one last time.
The game was yet another good example of what can happen when the game becomes a penalty parade. There weren't even that many of them, but several calls against LaRonge helped set up the Terriers with over nine minutes of powerplay time to work with.
Breitkreuz, Majkowski and Eisenhut all cashed in.
By very little, if any coincidence at all, three of those four players were named game stars.
Anyone interested in keeping track of Yorkton penalties was no doubt pleased. Game five in La Ronge, the Ice Wolves scored all of their four goals on the power play. On Sunday night, they didn't have much in the way of chances because the Terriers only took three calls all night long. Not bad for the highest level of hockey for those 20 years-of-age and under. Sam Rockwell, Riley Paterson and Devin McMullen were otherwise well behaved all night and it pretty much showed it on the scoreboard too. La Ronge took eight in total, including two of them which came at the worst possible times: last several minutes or more of the third period then one in OT.
