From Nov 26 to Dec 1, Hockey Canada hosted the Capital City Challenge, a little four-team tournament featuring the CHL’s new bright stars in the U17 age group playing the Canadian women’s hockey team.
The tournament featured five Oakville players spread across three different teams.
Team black featured Oshawa Generals forward Calum Ritchie and Peterborough Petes forward Nick Lardis. Both of which are Oakville natives.
Playing for Team Red was Oakville Rangers alumni and North Bay Batallion’s forward Owen Outwater.
Oakville natives Luke Misa of the Mississauga Steelheads and Matthew Soto of the Kingston Forntinacs played for Team White.
With the tournament only having four teams, all teams qualified for the semi-finals, and the winners of those games went to the gold medal game, and the losers of those games went to the Bronze Medal game.
The Semi-Finals saw Owen Outwater’s Team Red win a decisive 6-2 victory over Misa and Soto’s Team White. The other Semi-Final game saw the Women’s National Team come back from a 3-0 deficit to force overtime, but they ultimately lost to Team Black by a score of 4-3.
Team White convincingly won the Bronze medal game by 6-1, but the Gold Medal game was a very exciting game.
After Team Red took a 4-3 lead with 29 seconds left, the game looked to be over, but Team Black’s Zach Benson scored with 0.2 seconds left off of a Calum Ritchie face-off win to tie the game and send it into overtime.
After chances went both ways for both teams, Calum Ritchie got the puck on a breakaway and looked to put the game away.
Ritchie gathered the puck at centre ice and moved in across the blue line, going from his backhand to his forehand, shot it off the post and in to capture the Gold Medal for Team Black and end the first-ever Capital City Challenge.
After the game, Calum said this to reporters: "Winning the gold medal and wearing the maple leaf on our chests, it was the experience of a lifetime."
The tournament ended up being a big success, some thought the tournament would be a watered-down event, but Steven Ellis from The Hockey/news said otherwise.
"I thought it was pretty solid. Obviously, it’s kind of hard mixing the Women’s national team with a bunch of U17 teams," commented Ellis. "The expectation was that the scores would be kind of lopsided when the Women’s team played, but they played outstanding in the Semi-final game when they went down 3-0 and forced overtime."
"For the most part," Ellis continues, "I thought it was good, and it was a good chance to see these guys play the way they wanted because last year we didn’t get any U17 action, so this year it was good to see these guys play considering they didn’t get to play much competitive hockey last year."
Aside from Ritchie who had five goals and six assists for 11 points and was second among the tournament in points behind linemate Zach Benson, the rest of the Oakville players performed very well.
- Matthew Soto had two goals and three assists for five points in five games.
- Nick Lardis had one goal and one assist in three games while also dealing with an illness during the tournament.
- Owen Outwater had one goal and one assist in five games.
- Luke Misa had no goals and two assists for two points in five games.
Luke Misa commented on his time at the event, saying, "It was a really good experience. I met a lot of good teammates and a lot of people from other leagues. The practices and games were really good, and the facilities were nice too."