Chris Gleason never thought his second-period goal would end up as the game winner.

He got some help from his goaltender, Matt King.

Gleason scored at 10:42 of the second to earn the Champagne and Aishihik Storm an eventual 5-3 win over the defending champions Fort McPherson Gwich'in

Flames in the A Division final of the 34th Annual Yukon Native Hockey Tournament on Sunday.

"My brother (Ryan Gleason) was cutting down the wing and kind of fumbled the puck, so he had to go behind the net…and I just cut to the front of the net, he threw it out in front and I was able to chip it in,” Chris said.

King ensured that goal stuck as the winner with about five minutes left to go in the third period, after soaking up intense pressure from the Flames for a period and a half.

"That was unreal,” Chris said of King's save. "He kept us ahead there for the longest time. It's fitting that he got the best goalie.”

The Storm goaltender was caught out of position when a Flames' shot was headed for the bottom corner.

King slid across the crease and made the diving stick save to maintain a 4-3 lead.

"I guess I got a little bit lucky,” said King, who went on to win the Division A Best Goalie award. "I saw the shooter there with the puck and I just dove across and shot my stick out and luckily got it.

"It feels amazing, when you feel like you're in the zone, seeing a lot of the shots. My team did a good job keeping them to the outside, so if I could see the shots I felt like I could stop them.”

King's stop came near the back end of a slew of penalties, including a 10-minute misconduct to Storm captain Kirk Gale.

"We got ourselves into some penalty trouble in the third period and we seemed to be down most of the period,” King said.

Something of an understatement, especially when the Flames took two penalties all game, one in the second and one in the third.

The Storm took five total penalties in the third, but killed off Gale's and a five on three.

"We shouldn't be taking penalties against a good passing team like that, but Matt bailed us out,” Gale said.

"Once we got over that hump, it really helped us, the momentum started swinging our way, and I think they got deflated a little bit. Their top five or six guys were playing lots. Some could say they may have run out of gas, but we still had gas in the tank to compete and our battle level was high, and it turned out for the best.”

The Flames jumped out to an early lead off a goal from Jonas Thomson at 15:43 of the first.

The Storm responded almost immediately at 14:44 of the opening period when Scott Horsey took a breakaway feed from Jared Tuton, who won the Division A Best Defense award.

Storm forward Ed Long put his team ahead with a goal at 19:31 of the second, which was cancelled out by Thomson's second of the game at 13:03.

The Storm started to pull away with TJ Cunningham's goal at 14:52 of the second, bringing the lead to 4-2 before Flames' forward Cody Peterson netted his team's third goal at 1:37 of the second.

Storm forward Scott Horsey ended it with an empty net goal with three seconds left to go in the game.

Thomson, winner of the Division A MVP award, said the defending-champion Flames had no expectations heading into the final.

"I didn't expect anything…I just went out there every game and gave it all I got,” said Thomson, who has traveled 4,700 kilometres from Saskatchewan to play in the tournament more than once.

"The game was what I expected. We all expected the same as a team, hard work pays off. But we got some chances. It went both ways.

"I know what to expect, I know what you got to do, and sometimes it doesn't go your way.”

The Storm approached the game similarly.

"We got some good luck on our side as well, a couple of good goals, but it was all from hard work,” Gale said.

"That's what it takes. It takes everyone competing at 100 per cent all the time. It's getting tougher and tougher, guys are coming from down south, highly skilled kids, and it's good hockey.”

Gale last won in the A Division with the now-defunct North Yukon Eagles in 2006.

This was the Storm's first win in the A Division.

The club – which boasts many local players from the Whitehorse Recreational Hockey League's The Road House Bar and Grill – was knocked out of last year's tournament after two games, Gale said.

"Ryan Gleason put a team together, we got some new uniforms, we got a new lease on life this weekend. We just felt like we had nine good forwards, six good D and a good goaltender, and we just wanted to keep it going, because we knew at the end if we could get more games in, keep playing, we could wear other teams down just by having more players that could play,” Gale said.

"We just come together and play hockey – and that's what it's all about, that's what's good about this, you meet new guys every year, there's some good hockey players. Hats off to the Gwich'in Flames, they were a good team, good passing team, there were a lot of good players there. We knew we had to get in their way, we knew we had to grind it out with them, we just wanted to make sure they worked for everything they got.”

Added King:

"It feels good to win a close game like that. Our team pulled together and got better and better each game. It feels a lot better when the games are close – it was a high-intensity game.”