Weecobeyang overcomes cold start to secure C-side championship

Hockey players from Cat Lake must have been happy just to be playing indoors, never mind in a championship game.
Outside the Dryden Memorial Arena, the temperature dropped as low as –25 Celsius on Sunday. Inside that morning, after a week of games involving 29 teams, two Cat Lake teams met in the C-side final of the Northern Bands Hockey Tournament.
They hadn’t had much opportunity to practice for this big moment back home, almost 300 kilometres north, where those in the community of 550 skate on an outdoor rink.
“It was always snowing, always cold,” Ronald Gray, a left-winger for Cat Lake Weecobeyang, said of a winter that was harsher than usual. “It was too cold; everybody was getting frostbite out there. We didn’t get much skating at all.”
Weecobeyang managed only about a week of steady ice time, just before the Northern Bands, Gray said.
The shortage of practice showed early in the tournament, as the team lost three games in a row during round robin play.
But with those games behind them, “We kind of clicked once the knockout round came,” said Gray.
Weecobeyang wins over the Sachigo Giants and Poplar Hill Wildhogs led to the C-side championship game. A stick cut Gray over the right eye late in the 8-3 victory over the Wildhogs, but he waited until after the game to get the five stitches needed to close the wound.
In the final against hometown rival Cat Lake Rez 216, Weecobeyang controlled the puck for most of the first period, building a 3-0 lead. Tommy Anderson replied for Rez 216 with a goal early in the second period but his team failed to score on a two-man advantage that followed.
“We don’t have enough players,” Anderson said while serving a penalty in the third period, looking across the ice at only three teammates on the Rez 216 bench.
Gray scored on breakaways two of Weecobeyang’s five unanswered goals that period, for a 9-1 win. Weecobeyang also got two goals each from Reuben Sakakeesic and Darwin Gray.
Despite a sometimes rough game, Rez 216 players cheered loudly when Weecobeyang received its championship trophy – Gray’s first.
The 24-year-old held the trophy as players from both teams surrounded him for post-game photos.