Christmas is tournament time for young hockey players, and Ridge Meadows Minor hockey hosted the Rustlers Winter Roundup this week for some of its youngest players.
In the atom C tournament at Planet Ice, there were two divisions named after a pair of local hockey stars.
In the gold medal game in the Cam Neely Division, the Ridge C1 Red Rovers won a close game over the Ridge C3 Panthers, 4-3.
It was a Cinderella story, as the Panthers had found wins hard to come by so far this season – with just one in the regular season – but got their game together in time for the Christmas tournament.
The Ridge Meadows C5 Young Guns beat Cloverdale C1 by a 6-1 margin in the bronze medal game in the Cam Neely division – the stronger of the two divisions.
In the Brendan Morrison division, the Ridge C7 Machine beat Mission C2 by a score of 5-3, to take the gold medal.
The Ridge C6 Warriors beat the Ridge C4 Rustlers by a score of 3-0 in the bronze medal game.
There were 10 teams in the tournament, including entries from Seattle, Cloverdale, two from Mission and six locals.
At the same time as the atom action was being played out at Planet Ice, the teams in Hockey 2, 3 and 4 took part in a jamboree at Pitt Meadows Arena. At that level, the teams play for fun, and don’t record their scores.
• The atom A3 Rustlers won the gold medal at the Port Moody rep tournament over the holidays.
The Rustlers placed third in the round-robin portion, making them underdogs, but defeated the hometown Moody team in the semi-finals 4-1.
That put them in the tourney final against Semiahmoo. The championship game was tied 4-4 until the last three minutes when the Rustlers got the game winner, and they added an empty netter for a 6-4 win.