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Cold Lake Aeros top of their league

The Cold Lake Aeros are dominating the WSHL Provincial Division standings with a regular season record of 14 wins and one loss.

COLD LAKE – The Cold Lake Aeros Junior A Tier II hockey team is sitting comfortably at the top of the Western States Hockey League (WSHL), with 14 wins and one loss so far this season.  

On Sunday afternoon at the Cold Lake Energy Centre, the Aeros beat the Hinton Timberwolves 3-1, in a highly physical match bordering on excessively rough, with the home team’s medical staff stepping on the ice more than once to assist injured players.   

Facing the Hinton Timberwolves for the third time this season, Jaxon Taylor, the goalie for the Aeros, said the team went into the game feeling good about how it would unfold.  

“Last time we played them, they gave us a little bit of a scare, but we knew that we could take them if we just kept it down to basics and just played our game.” 

With only two points separating the teams for the majority of the final period, the number of penalties and roughness increased exponentially for both the home and away benches in the third period. 

According to Taylor, the rising tension was nothing out of the ordinary for the two teams. 

“We are generally a pretty physical team anyways, but we try to stay away from the chippy stuff, you know, try to stay out of the fighting as much as we can, but we're definitely going to walk up to that line as often as we can, trying to get our opponents rattled a little bit,” he said, adding that the Aeros were successful in their game and strategy. 

“There were a couple of times where we laid some big hits and we scored some big goals. So, I think we were getting in their heads,” said Taylor. 

Describing what he believes has led to the team's success thus far, Taylor said, “Definitely our team chemistry — We spend a lot of time with each other when we are at the rink. We spend a lot of time together away from the rink too, so it makes practices fun, it makes practices competitive. We're really just like a brotherhood at this point.” 

Seeing so much success in the first half of the season, Taylor adds moving forward, “We're going to treat every game the same. I think a big mentality of ours is we try to have a nameless, faceless and uniform-less opponent so we can go out and play exactly the same no matter who it is that we're playing.” 

Moving into the second half of the season, the Aeros will likely be facing off against some of the American teams in their league, however, with the ongoing pandemic and restrictions, logistics remain a large factor in cross-border game scheduling. 

No matter who the Aeros play, Taylor explained that the team is focused on “keeping our intensity up and not getting too high and not getting down to low.”  

He adds, “The season is a marathon not a sprint, so we have to be able to try to find a way to keep the same level of play that we had last night, like we had again today and continue to bring it in, especially when we get to those three games in three days scenarios.” 

First to light up the score board in Sunday’s game was Nathan Stevens assisted by Kyle Avery at the start of the second period, followed by a goal from Avery who was assisted by Braden Swampy and Dylan Bauer.  

It wouldn’t be until part way through the third period before the Aeros would find the back of the Timberwolves net again. The Aeros’ Sean Symes with the help of Stephen Mosgopolous and Ethan Joe, scored their final goal of the night half way through the third period.  

In the last five minutes of the game the Timberwolves would return one of three goals before the final buzzer sounded.   

The Cold Lake Aeros next home game will be against the Vegreville Vipers on Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. at the Cold Lake Energy Centre. 

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