The 100 Mile House Wranglers got by the Victoria Cougars 5-4 in the Cyclone Taylor Cup gold-medal game, and are now the British Columbia Junior B Champions.
Wranglers coach Dale Hladun once said, "I might write the script, but it's the boys who make it exciting."
And that it was.
The Victoria Cougars entered the championship game with a 3-0 round-robin record, including a 4-2 victory over the Wranglers in round 1, and the Vancouver Island squad was considered the top seed.
The Wranglers entered the game for all of the marbles with their trademark bang-and-bash, grind-the- opponent-down attitude.
Nick McCabe, who has been having a tremendous playoff run, opened the scoring for the Wranglers with an unassisted goal at 14:10 of the first period.
Wrangler Brett Harris, who was named the first star of the game, notched the 2-0 goal with the assists going to Tyler Povelofskie and Jaydon Gilding.
Cougar Dom Kolbeins, who was named the second star of the game, narrowed the gap to 2-1 in the second stanza, with Nathan Looysen and Cody Hodges getting the assists.
The third period saw the game open up big time.
Justin Bond (Harris) regained the two-goal lead to make 3-1 early in the third period.
Then the Cougars not only clawed their way back into the game, but they also took a 4-3 lead on three consecutive unanswered goals by Kolbeins (Bryton Beattie), Jason Passmore (Nico Somervile, Ryan Carson) and John Kretzschmar (Passmore).
With time winding down, Harris found the back of the net with on unassisted goal to knot the score at four apiece.
With Passmore off for making head contact with just under two minutes to play, Ryan Friesen (Povelofskie, Harris) gave the Wranglers the 5-4 victory that gave the Wranglers the Provincial Junior B Championship and a berth in the Keystone Cup in Regina, Saskatchewan on April 14-17.
The 100 Mile House lads will be going up against the other Junior B champions from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario.
Read the details of the Cyclone Taylor Cup in the April 14 edition of the 100 Mile House Free Press.
