The Whitehorse Peewee Mustangs brought back some silver hardware from Victoria after an all-north final in the team’s second tournament of the year.

The Mustangs fell to Yellowknife 4-0 in the Tier 2 gold medal game of the Juan de Fuca Minor Hockey Peewee Representative Tournament Nov. 10-12 in Victoria.

Mustangs head coach Derek Johnstone said the team usually competes in Tier 3 tournaments and competed up a level. He said the team performed well against this higher calibre of competition.

“It went well with a lot stronger competition,” he said. “We got goals, played well, it was nice to see us in a final.”

This was the second B.C. tournament for the team in this early season, Johnstone said, as they travelled down to Squamish in early October where they also placed second. They lost the final of the Tier 3 tournament in a shootout to a team from Whistler, Johnstone said.

The Mustangs played three round robin games in the eight-team tournament. They opened the tournament in a bright and early 7 a.m. matchup against Kerry Park.

With three different goal scorers, the Mustangs took the game 3-1 and were back on the ice the next morning against Portland.

Whitehorse opened up a lead early and kept the pressure on, leading 4-1 after the first period. In the second, the Mustangs scored three goals in less than two minutes to increase their lead to 7-1. Leading 10-3 at the end of the second period, Whitehorse would add two more in the third for a 12-4 win.

“We started fast, the kids were fired up on that game,” Johnstone said of the win. “We had really good passing and puck support.”

In their final round robin game, it was a northern rivalry against Yellowknife with the Mustangs falling 7-4.

Finishing third in the round robin, the Mustangs played an undefeated team from Vancouver in the semifinals winning 5-2 to set up a gold medal game rematch with Yellowknife.

But it was another tough loss for the Mustangs in the final Sunday afternoon with the Mustangs falling 4-0.

But Johnstone acknowledged it was great to see the two northern teams play so well and both make it to the final.

The Mustangs, who play in the bantam house league division in the Whitehorse Minor Hockey Association, will now be mostly idle as far as competitive tournaments go until January with the Yukon Championships, Johnstone said.

The team was trying to organize an international showdown like the bantam team is having in December but were unable to get enough teams to participate, Johnstone said.

The team from Yellowknife was willing to come, he added, but being the only team it wouldn’t have made for much of a tournament.

The peewee team is the only official Mustangs team for Whitehorse this year, with the bantam and midget divisions not getting enough players for the tryouts and instead created a Yukon Arctic Winter Games development program.