Jason La Rose
Canada’s National Junior A Championship will make its home in British Columbia for the 14th time after the Chilliwack Chiefs came from behind to beat the Wellington Dukes on Sunday night and win a home-ice RBC Cup.
CHILLIWACK CHIEFS 4, WELLINGTON DUKES 2 Will Calverley, Corey Andonovski and Tommy Lee scored less than eight minutes apart in the third period to lead the Chiefs to their first national title with a comeback win over the Dukes in the RBC Cup final Sunday night.
The Chiefs are the second consecutive host team and third in the last four years to win Canada’s National Junior A Championship, surviving a nine-week layoff after losing in the first round of the BCHL playoffs.
“I saw one of our guys going and he chipped the puck in. It took a funny bounce off the glass and popped out right to me. I tried to get a quick shot away and I was lucky enough to get it through on the second little poke." -- Corey Andonovski, Chilliwack Chiefs
“I told them to believe in themselves and stay with it. I knew our conditioning would take over and I felt we had the legs to make a push in the third. The team didn’t get fancy, they didn’t try to win it on every shift. We just kind of controlled the puck, wore them down a bit and the results started to show for us.” -- Brian Maloney, head coach, Chilliwack Chiefs
LEADING SCORERS Jasper Weatherby (Wenatchee) 3G 5A 8P Will Calverley (Chilliwack) 6G 1A 7P Finn Evans (Ottawa) 3G 3A 6P Corey Andonovski (Chilliwack) 3G 2A 5P A.J. Vanderbeck (Wenatchee) 2G 3A 5P
LEADING GOALTENDERS Mathieu Caron (Chilliwack) 1-0 / 1.00 GAA / .963 SV% Seth Eisele (Wenatchee) 2-0 / 1.04 GAA / .941 SV% Daniel Chenard (Chilliwack) 4-1 / 1.77 GAA / .937 SV% Austin Park (Wenatchee) 2-1 / 2.16 GAA / .889 SV% Connor Hicks (Ottawa) 2-3 / 2.63 GAA / .903 SV%
STAR OF THE DAY Corey Andonovski – Chilliwack Chiefs
NEXT GAMES 2019 RBC Cup – May 11-19 – Brooks, Alta.