YORKTON - The Yorkton Junior Terriers are celebrating 50 years in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League this season.
To mark the milestone Yorkton This Week is digging into its archives and pulling out a random Terrier-related article from the past five decades of reporting on the team, and will be running one each week, just as it originally appeared.
This feature, of which this is he final installment, has appeared weekly over the entire season in the pages of The Marketplace.
Week #26 comes from Nov. 8, 2006.
It was the Kyle Turris show for Team Canada West in the tournament opening game of the Workd Junior ‘A’ Hockey Challenge Monday.
Turris, a member of the Burnaby Express of the British Columbia Hockey League, would score the first four goals of the game to power Team Canada to a 6-2 win over Team Russia at the Farrell Agencies Arena in Yorkton.
Only two players had previously scored four goals in a single game for Canada at the Junior level. Mario Lemieux and Simon Gagne, who both went on to the National Hockey League, had quadruple goal games in World Junior play.
Turris’ Burnaby teammate Tyler McNeeley, and Kyle Reed who plays with Notre Dame of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL) would add single goals.
Turris, who was the Team Canada West Player of the Game was quick to turn attention to the team win, rather than his own efforts.
“It was a good game, but I’m not too worried about my goals and statistics,” said the 17-year-old forward. “It was a good win for the team.”
Asked again about his goals, Turris said, “I was getting lots of bounces, and I had some great passes from my teammates. They were some beauties … They’re skilled and knowledgeable players who knew where I was.”
Team Canada West head coach Boris Rybalka said the four-goal performance was impressive, but it came from a very talented player too. “He’s a great young man to start with … He’s very modest, but he can play.”
Egor Dubrovskiy, and Yakov Seleznev, who was Team Russia Player of the game responded with goals against Keanan Boomer in the Canadian net.
Russian head coach Miskhat Fakhrutdinov said his team did not accomplish what their game plan had set out for Monday, thanks in large part to Turris putting the Russians into comeback mode most of the game.
“Number 19 (Turris) is a good player,” said Fakhrutdinov through an interpreter.
Beyond Turris’ performance Fakhrutdinov said his team “were not prepared for this game 100 per cent.
“The team was nervous … It was the opening game, of course the boys were very nervous.”
On the other side of the ice Team Canada West was all smiles after the win.
“It was a great moment for our team here and a great experience for me personally,” said Chad Nehring, who is a member of the Yorkton Terriers of the SJHL.
Fakhrutdinov said the nerves meant the Russians were not on top of their game Monday. “We failed to do what we wanted to do.”
The Russian coach said Team Canada was on average two years older than his squad made up almost exclusively of 17-year-olds. That seemed to give Team Canada an edge in skill and physical play, he said.
Playing physical was an obvious game plan for Team Canada West.
“Definitely it was,” said Turris. “We had some guys laying some big hits. That gave us some momentum, and I think we fed off that momentum …
“I thought we really took it too them … I think that was the key.”
Nehring agreed the Canadians wanted to make sure they finished their checks.
“We wanted to go hard every shift and I thought tonight we did that,” he said. “We kept working every shift. We never did let them get into their game.”
Rybalka said a physical edge is something he wanted to see Team Canada West achieve. “I think that’s just Canadian hockey, being disciplined and physical.” He added the Canadians had to stay on top of the Russians to be successful. “Thry are very skilled. We couldn’t allow them room to skate in open ice. You can’t allow them to dangle or they’ll hurt you.”
However, the Team Canada coach said his team skated stride-for-stride with the Russians too.
“I think we showed we could skate with them. I think that shocked them a little bit.”
Looking ahead to the remainder of the tournament Fakhrutdinov said they will not look to change their game plan, although they may juggle their line up. Russia was scheduled to play Belarus at the Farrell Agencies Arena in Yorkton Tuesday but results were not available at press time.
Team Canada West’s next game is tonight at the Farrell Agencies Arena, when they face Belarus.
Rybalka said they want to approach the game against Belarus much as they did against Russia.
“We looked at this game tonight as though it was a Game 7. Now we’ll look at Wednesday as a Game 7,” he said.
“…We have to know we have to go out and work hard to win Wednesday.”
