It’s another small town rink – cold but full of energy and atmosphere. I’m standing in the corner with a lukewarm coffee watching the game ahead of ours but this time it’s different …

I won’t be behind a bench today, but in the stands like any other fan... and I’m more nervous than I have been since the 2017 Coy Cup final in Takhini arena. We are in Prince George, where five U13 Yukon girls are getting ready to play their first rep (A) hockey after being asked to join the Northwest (NW) Female A team for a scheduled game set.

As I watch the game at hand, waiting for the girls turn, I slowly start to smile … I was right, I’d been telling anyone that would listen that I’ve watched these teams all year through their streams and our girls belong at the rep level … that I’m biased, but I think they will be some of the best players there.

But now they had to answer the bell. Leading up to the game the girls were beyond nervous – it’s tough just hopping onto a team. Also tough not knowing if you belonged, as this was the first time they’d ever played at the rep level, other than when they played U15 rep, which was challenging to say the least.

As the teams do their cheer, it’s almost like the coach knew they needed to dive into the pool and sent out all five to start the game with Kasey Mckenna centring Sophie Drummond and Ella Johnston, with Maya Bulmer and Danica Johnson on the back end.

You could tell they just wanted to get through the first shift and they did, playing very cautiously and it ended with them icing the puck. They needed a spark, something to validate what their coaches had been telling them and the next shift it happened, a TSN turning point, so to speak and it came from the legs of Maya. Shortly into the first, Maya took the puck from her own zone and made a couple of nice moves to go end to end and rip a shot off the post, blasting by the entire team.

The group turned a switch right then, realizing that if Maya can make it look that easy, so could they. From then on they all played the way they do when they are at their best, using their biggest strength (skating), but also their special attributes. Ella and Kasey are strong bull moose with wheels, and were making life hell for the NE Predators team on the forecheck while being hard to defend. Sophie continually used her jack rabbit speed to sneak behind defenders for opportunities and flew back to pick pockets on the back check. Danica and Maya combined positional D and agility with their ability to make smart plays, looking off forecheckers to make plays instead of having to rip pucks off the glass or taking it themselves when the time was right.

The Yukon coaches were finally able to take a few deep breaths and sit back and enjoy the action. The first game ended 4-2 for the Predators, with an empty netter late in the game.

The second game was similar, ending 5-2 for the opposition, with another empty net goal. The final game got away on them in the second and ended 7-1, but the score wasn’t indicative of the gameplay. Some goalie challenges and they needed some extra shifts, I’d say. The girls were in on four of the five goals, with Ella potting two and Sophie adding another goal.

To put this in perspective, the last time these four teams played, Northwest was outscored 29-3, losing most games 10-0, 9-0. So to say they changed the makeup, despite three losses, is an understatement.

These four teams (NW B.C., NE B.C., Williams Lake, Prince George) will all be combining forces to form a Northern Female A team to go to provincials. We were asked multiple times why our girls weren’t joining the group.

Unfortunately they needed the girls at multiple weekends to make sure it was fair to those able to fully commit, but it was pretty clear all five would have been cornerstones on that group, giving us 30 per cent of the Northern B.C. team.

The first one and a half games, the NW coach kept the Yukon girls together, often sneaking them extra shifts, which certainly helped the scores in those two games. When on as a unit, they rarely went a shift without a high level scoring chance. For the last game and a half, it looked like the coach was looking to balance his lines and split up the girls onto each line and looking to get either Danica or Maya, but not both, on the back end.

Overall, an extremely entertaining weekend and while the girls were all Swede, no Finnish with the amount of chances they had, we at least know what to work on (putting pucks in the back of the net). The group dubbed the “Yukon girls” around the rink put their stamp on the weekend.

The importance of this weekend dawned on me as we started our journey home and that is, like all the girls who came before, these girls are setting up the future for those U11’s and U9’s that want to play rep hockey. Along with Alia Drummond and Emery Twardochleb, who turned heads earlier in the year for NE B.C. We are now getting emails, exchanging contacts with B.C. folks who will be bugging us with “who else do you have?”

I’d say the NW Coach summed it up as we thanked him and his group for the weekend.

I parted with “keep us in mind for any other opportunities”. His reply ... “Oh your girls are on my mind!”

–Submitted by Dan Johnson