The Juneau-Douglas High School hockey team knows that to earn a state tournament berth at the end of the season, it has to play some of the best hockey programs in the area.
The competition might not get any tougher than it was during last weekend’s trip to Whitehorse for six games against the Yukon Mustangs club program, a rep club that plays the elite teams from across the western North America rinks.
“The perspective that we take away from it is we wanted to go up there and have a good experience for our whole program,” JDHS coach Luke Adams said, “to set expectations and see where we are as a program and what type of team we want to be character-wise.”
On Friday, the JDHS varsity program lost to the U18 Midget Mustangs by a 6-0 margin and the junior varsity lost to the U16 Mustangs by more than eight goals. Both games were at the Takhini Arena.
On Saturday morning, the two programs played again, with JDHS closing the gap but still losing 4-2 in the varsity contest. The JV fell 7-0. JDHS senior Chase Barnum had a goal with assists by classmates Zach Hebert and Jacob Dale, and Hebert scored with a Barnum assist.
In the afternoon, the U15 Bantam Mustangs defeated the JDHS JV 4-1 and the U16 Mustangs topped the JDHS varsity 5-0. Crimson Bears freshman Bill Bosse got the Juneau goal with assist by classmate Tyler Weldon.
“As coaches, we expected the competition to be really tough because we know what Whitehorse produces and how their programs are,” Adams said. “The competition level that we were facing was really high. We wanted to see how we would compete and how we would react in a tough situation.”
All games consisted two 22-minute stop-time periods.
The freshmen-laden JV squad did not expect the fast-paced action, Adams said.
“We play house-level hockey,” Adams said. “And these were all top-tier teams for Whitehorse, and that is the skill level we are trying to develop.”
Juneau youths play recreational hockey, according to Adams.
The Whitehorse/Yukon club teams are comprised of selected players based on skill and development who have access to ice all year and skate together from age 6.
“So our kids’ competition, not only on a regular basis, but a tournament level is based on house level players and competition,” Adam said. “What we faced were youth teams that were more advanced in their technical training and their hockey development. We were outmatched.”
While the scores were an indication of where JDHS hockey is at this point in the young season, the Crimson Bears know where they need to improve.
“All the kids were walking out knowing they have to play a lot faster on the junior varsity level,” Adams said, “that they have to work on their technical games. On the varsity, we had a lot of the same outcomes but the big difference wasn’t the speed of our players; it was the speed and precision of play. A lot of our kids do not have the experience of playing consistently at a high level. This was a great way to start the season because we can focus on how we need to play to be effective all the time, not just when our competition is fierce.”
Adams said the varsity team responded well to the games.
“We started making adjustments and overall we would do the trip again in a heartbeat if we could,” Adams said. “It is only going to bring out the best in our team and the growth that our players receive.”
The Crimson Bears have invited the Whitehorse club to come to Juneau in the middle of December. On Thursday, the Crimson Bears will travel to open Alaska high school play against Kenai and Soldotna.
“Right now we are really working on giving our goaltenders a chance to develop and we are going to give them those opportunities,” Adams said. “We see a lot of positives in all three of our goaltenders, and our goal is to find out which ones are most committed and hard working throughout the season and which are ready to go when conference games start. A big part of this is we are just starting our season. We have a lot of X’s and O’s that we can adjust and advance. For this trip we were really concentrating on competition and we competed every minute of every game. We never gave in or threw in the towel and we never got negative. That is a real quality we want to see in our team.”
