A Whistler team full of comeback kids is on its way to the provincial championships. The Whistler Minor Hockey Association’s Peewee rep squad has emerged as its league’s playoff champions, a victory earned even though the players found themselves falling behind by a game to start each of their key playoff rounds.

In the Whistler team’s four-point playoff series against a Semiahmoo squad, where the first team to earn four points got to advance to the final four, the Winterhawks were the favourites going in, coach Greg Welsh said. But their opponents came in with more determination, and surged to victory in the first game of the series.

“It took us a game to wake up,” Welsh said. Team manager Anton Horvath said the players then “bounced back from their defeat.”

The Whistler players went on to beat Semiahmoo 6-3 in a “really strong second game (where) we knew what to expect,” Welsh said. Then they gritted out a nailbiting 1-0 win over the Semiahmoo squad to secure the four points they needed to advance to the final round.

Taking on tough teams from New Westminster, the Burnaby Winter Club and the North Shore Winter Club in a final-four round where the first team to earn four points wins, and the top two teams would advance to the provincial championships, the Whistler squad again started the series with a loss, falling 6-3 to the New Westminster team.

In the first period, the Winterhawks fell behind 5-0 in the first period, as the team “got caught watching,” Welsh said ruefully. “We were spectators in that first period.”

But the close-knit group of players rebounded to score three goals in the next two periods while only allowing one, setting them up for their next comeback even though they did still lose the game 6-3.

After that loss, Horvath said, the boys again bounced back “and had two really strong games after that.”

In a must-win second game, the Winterhawks defeated the Burnaby Winter Club squad in a seesaw battle that saw them win 5-3 after an empty-net goal solidified their edge.

The clash was a “very, very close game,” Welsh said. “It went back and forth and back and forth.”

The boys pulled it off, and “that was the game that gave us a chance,” Welsh said.

In the next critical matchup, the Whistler squad took on the North Shore Winter Club team that had edged them out for the league championship, finishing atop the regular-season standings by two points with Whistler in second.

“We wanted to exact revenge on them,” Welsh said. His players came out firing, and stormed to an energizing 5-2 victory. The first-year Peewee players on the team particularly stepped up, matching the play of the solid core of second-year Peewees and team leaders.

“When the boys won their final game, the mood on the ice was like when Team Canada won (the Olympic gold-medal game). They were pretty emotional. It was really fun to watch,” Horvath said.

Because Burnaby beat the New Westminster team that had defeated the Whistler squad in that opening game, the Winterhawks became the playoff champions, achieving a goal established at the outset of the season.

They are advancing with the Burnaby team to the provincial championship rounds, which start this Saturday (March 6) in Winfield. The Winterhawks will spread their wings against teams from Campbell River, Castlegar, Cranbrook, Fort St. John, Kelowna, Terrace, Whitehorse and Winfield, in full-length games with 20-minute periods and 15-minute intermissions.

“We’re going to really have to work on our stamina,” Welsh said. But the team’s strengths will stand them in good stead.

“We’re really good at competing for the puck. We win a lot of battles for the puck, and we’ve really, really improved in our team positioning. We very rarely are out of position. And we have a very, very strong second-year group,” the coach said.

He also hailed the dedication and sacrifices of the team’s parent volunteers, without whom none of these achievements would have been possible.

The high-performing Peewee rep players are: Michael Boulanger, Thomas Cankovic, Zachary Davis, Cole Demers, Taylor Derynck, Jacob Fields, Owen Hart, Gavin Hemmons, Hugh Horler, Evan Horvath, Liam Long, Liam McIvor, Benjamin Raffler, Austin Reith, Gabriel Rushbrook, Connor Toop, Beck Warm and Tyler Welsh.

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ICE CHIPS: The Bantam girls’ team went out on a high note this season, playing their best game of the year in their final playoff clash with the top-ranked team from Langley. The No. 1 squad potted two early goals but the Winterhawks fought back with one marker, before Langley eventually pulled away and won 6-2.

“They played their best game of the year and they knew it, so they were happy with that,” assistant coach Dave Sharpe wrote in an email.