Bantam AAA

Big comeback falls just short

The Prince County Warriors will go into the final day of round-robin play at the 2016 Irving Oil Challenge Cup Atlantic bantam AAA hockey championship tournament in Moncton, N.B., with a record of -2 (wonlost). The Warriors lost their lone game Friday – a 5-3 decision to the host Moncton Hawks.

The Prince County Warriors fought back, but came up just short in their second game at the Irving Oil Challenge Cup on Friday afternoon. The Warriors, champions of the P.E.I. Irving Oil Bantam AAA Hockey League, trailed the host Moncton Hawks 4-0 after one period, but narrowed the gap to 4-3 after two periods. Moncton scored early in the third to make it 5-3. The Warriors made it 5-4, but couldn’t get the equalizer.

“A 4-0 (deficit) is hard to come back from, and it ended up being too much,” acknowledged Warriors head coach Rodney MacArthur. With the loss, the Warriors fall to 0-2 (won-lost) while the Hawks are even at 1-1. The St. John’s Hitmen were leading the field at 2-0, and playing Nova Scotia’s Landworks Gulls (1-1) on Friday afternoon. The two New Brunswick teams, the Hawks and Kennebecasis Valley Kings were 1-1 heading into their 7 p.m. encounter. P.E.I. completes the round robin with two games on Saturday. They play the Hitmen at 9 a.m., and the Kings at 3 p.m. MacArthur acknowledged points in at least one of those games are needed to get P.E.I. into a medal game. The medal games are set for Sunday.

The third- and fourth-place teams play for bronze at 9 a.m., and the top two teams go for gold at noon.