The Avon View Avalanche Sr. Boys hockey team are looking for a few wins this week as they participate in the annual Birthplace of Hockey Tournament hosted by King’s-Edgehill School.
The tournament started Wednesday at Hants Exhibition Arena and concludes Nov. 20 at 1 p.m. with the tournament championship game.
The Avalanche will open their portion of the tournament at 4 p.m. Nov. 17 against Central Kings. On Nov. 18, the Avalanche will go up against archrival and tournament host KES at 7:30 p.m. They will conclude the round robin portion of their schedule Nov. 19 at 12:30 p.m. against Bishop's College. As was the case last season, former NHL player Stephan Lebeau will be back behind the bench for the Quebec school.
Following the round robin, there will be two crossover semi-final games Saturday evening at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., with the winners playing in Sunday's championship final.
The full tournament schedule was not available at press time.
Avalanche lose exhibition game 3-1
In their final game prior to the tournament opener, the Avalanche fell 3-1 Nov. 12 to a smooth skating Cobequid Education Centre squad from Truro.
“Cobequid is an excellent Division One school and we were suffering from a short bench due to an injury and three players playing football,” said head coach Mark Tye.
“We played a decent game and were down 2-0 after one period and 3-0 after two periods."
Ben Nelson scored the Avalanche's only goal in the third period.
“We simply took too many hooking and slashing penalties in the second period as well as a couple of minors despite not being intentional 'hits to the head,'” Tye noted.
AVHS returns to the regular season in the Valley High School Hockey League with games against Parkview High from Bridgewater on Nov. 26 and the Digby Mariners on Dec. 3. Both games begin at 6:30 p.m.
The Avalanche will also play Dec. 2 against Northeast Kings in Canning, and will participate in an exhibition tournament in Sydney in December.
