The North Central Hockey League championship series is underway and Slave Lake has the two-game advantage. Nobody should be surprised that the Winterhawks beat the Hinton Heat at home, but the wins were not of the usual variety. They were both close, low-scoring games.
In Saturday’s opener the ‘Hawks trailed 1 – 0 until midway through the third period when Dion Poitras finally solved Hinton goalie Ryan Meunier. Brian Bouchard scored the winner a couple of minutes later and the ‘Hawks had the Game 1 victory everybody expected but nobody expected to be so hard.
“They came to play,” says Coach Lorne Poitras of the Hinton effort. “I was impressed. It was anybody’s game.”
On Sunday the ‘Hawks took the 1 – 0 lead on Kelly Pearson’s first-period goal. That lasted until well into the third, when Slave Lake took a 3 – 0 lead on goals by Keith Sinclair and Kyle Hansen. The final score was 3 – 1.
Coach Poitras is quite pleased the way his team played in both games.
“Good team effort,” he says. “Goaltending was excellent. It was good hockey, really good hockey.”
The series resumes this weekend with games three and four in Hinton. The Winterhawks are still waiting to hear from the Grimshaw Huskies of the South Peace League for their second provincial playdown game. Grimshaw and Westlock must also play a game in the round robin series to see who represents the northwestern zone in the Senior ‘A’ provincials.

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