City of Quesnel Sports Hall of Fame - Myles Mattila

Brock Campbell photo

 

 

The Tier 3 Bantam Quesnel Thunder celebrate their provincial championship after beating the Castlegar Rebels 5-4 in overtime at Memorial Arena on Thursday.

 

MARCH 22, 2013

 

BROCK CAMPBELL

Quesnel Thunder forward Myles Mattila played the hero yesterday in the finals of the B.C. Bantam Hockey Championships. Mattila's overtime winner with 48 seconds left in extra-time gave the Thunder a 5-4 win over a stunned Castlegar squad.

"It's a pretty emotional time for us," said Thunder head coach Allan Slaney as his team skated their Tier 3 banner around the ice of Memorial Arena."These 17 boys worked hard all year. They travelled a lot of miles to play throughout the season. They worked so hard and I'm just so darn proud of them."In a wild finish, that left the Castlegar Rebels heartbroken, the Thunder defended the provincial title they won last year in Burnaby."We kind of rebuilt from last year and set our sights from Day One, and this is what the goal was and right where we wanted to be," said Slaney.And for the Thunder to get where they are now they had to get past a tough, never-say-die Rebels.

Tied 3-3 late in the third period, Castlegar looked to take command when forward Tanner Costa jammed home the puck between Thunder goaltender Reign Turley's skate and the post. However, the referee waved off the goal having lost sight of the puck, much to the dismay of the Rebels who thought they had secured a 4-3 lead.

After the no-goal, it was Quesnel that capitalized in the dying minutes, with Mattila again being the man to get the job done. His goal with just over a minute left in regulation had the Thunder thinking it was all over.

But in the dying seconds and with their title hopes on the line the Rebels never let up. With the extra attacker on the ice and a late face off in Quesnel's zone, Castlegar forced overtime when Costa took a quick shot right off the face-off win that found the back of the net to tie things at 4-4.

In the extra frame, with double-overtime looming, Mattila worked his magic scoring the unassisted marker that brought his teammates flying over the boards.

"It was a fantastic game," said Slaney, who expected to see Castlegar in the Championship Game after having faced them in preliminaries. "I said to my assistant coach after we played Castlegar in the round robin and we beat them 2-1, that 'we just saw the preview of the final.' I truly believed that we would see them in the final.

"They are well coached and are a class-act organization and should be proud of themselves for what they've achieved here in Dawson Creek," added Slaney. "They [Rebels] have a lot of speed and a very aggressive forecheck but all week long, for us, we never focused on what the other team had. We focused on what we had. We just had to do our job."

Mattila finished the game with three points; assisting on one other to lead the Thunder, and Keith Redden had two goals for Quesnel. On the losing end, Costa had two points, while Kyle Chernenkoff, Kadrain Klimchuk and Troy Negreiff each had a goal.

,#RYP.

Done