Twisters turn up intensity in third

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This article was published 30/04/2019 (2675 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MORRIS — The Pembina Valley Twisters had all the force of a light evening breeze in the beginning — but they generated F5 intensity when it mattered most.

The Twisters completed an improbable comeback here Tuesday night, scoring five unanswered goals in the second half of Game 7 to defeat the St. James Canucks 5-4 and capture the Manitoba Major Junior Hockey League championship.

Nico Vigier tied the game 4-4 just over five minutes into the third period and Jeremie Goderis scored the winning goal — his 10th of the post-season — with 8:26 left as Pembina Valley won its third league title.

The squad hoisted the Jack McKenzie Trophy for the first time since 2013, in front of more than 600 fans scrunched into Morris Multiplex Arena.

“Hell of a game, a lot of fun,” said Goderis. “We were down. What’s left but give it all you’ve got. You can’t give up. What are you saving it for? The season’s over after this. We just put everything on the table and hoped it worked out.

“We threw pucks to the net, we worked our butts off.”

The Twisters trailed 2-0 after the opening period and fell behind 4-0 after a pair of early second-period goals by Tyler Meixner, his 11th and 12th of the post-season for the Canucks.

Twisters head coach Ryan Dyck called a timeout immediately after Meixner’s second of the night.

“I just said, ‘We’re not playing our game. We’re not playing like we did in Game 6.’ We were sitting back, too afraid to make mistakes, and that’s not our style,” said Dyck. “We got to pressure, pressure, pressure, and that’s what they did.”

The Canucks were compelled to make the southern trek down Hwy. 75 after losing 5-1 to the Twisters in Game 6 on Sunday at St. James Civic Centre.

Down by four goals, the boys from southern Manitoba were finally roused from their evening snooze with half the game already in the books.

Travis Penner beat Canucks goalie Nathan Cvar through the legs at 13:43 for his ninth of the playoffs to ignite the Twisters, and then T.J. Matuszewski shovelled in a rebound just over two minutes later with the Canucks a man short.

“Honestly, I wasn’t that worried at any point in the game. I knew we were capable of taking her home, it was just a matter of getting the ball rolling,” said Penner, a champion in his first season with Pembina Valley.

“We had an awesome leadership group and they’re 110 per cent the reason that we won this thing and are standing here right now.”

Blue-liner Nick Hatley’s point drive through a maze of legs with just 45 seconds left in the second period pulled Pembina Valley to within one.

Vigier’s tying goal came with Meixner in the box serving a high-sticking minor. Pembina Valley goalie Travis Klassen made a couple of brilliant saves late, including a blocker stop off Ryan Ostermann on a partial breakaway.

That set the stage for Goderis’s winner, a low wrister that handcuffed Cvar.

“My linemate (Braeden Beernaerts) always bugs me that I look him off all the time on two-on-ones, so I thought I’d do it one last time,” Goderis said, laughing. “This means so much, especially winning with some friends who I’ve played with since we were little kids, (captain James) Van De Velde and Beernaerts. I wanted to win it for them.”

Goderis and Beernaerts were named co-MVPs of the playoffs.

The Twisters went from ninth place in 2017-18 to first in the 2018-19 regular season, posting 17 more victories (35-6-4). They knocked off the Charleswood Hawks and Stonewall Jets in the playoffs to reach the final.

“This team’s been resilient all year. We’ve come back from a lot of deficits, and look what we did here,” said Dyck. “The core group of these guys came in this year with an axe to grind and they definitely made sure tonight they finished the job.

“We never got down, we knew we weren’t out of it and had the ability to come back and win if we played our game.”

Klassen finished with 34 saves, while Cvar stopped 36 shots.

Cole Chicoine and Tristan Ezako scored first-period goals for the Canucks, whose MMJHL championship drought reached 21 years.

“We’re a little shell-shocked right now,” said St. James captain Wyatt Kemball. “First period was looking great, but don’t know what to say about the second and third. It just went downhill fast. We got caught on our heels. It’s like we thought we had it in the bag in the first, and that’s a little too early to sit back.

“This is my last year and there’s just no words for this.”

 

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell