As expected, Mission Black Ice 93 and the Mississauga Mission Rattlers reached the Bantam Platinum finals, with Black Ice winning 4-3.
The Colorado Kodiaks won the bronze medal, which you could think of as the gold medal for the rest of the field, because no one was in the same class as the Rattlers or Black Ice.
My son’s team, Revision Devil Dogs, had a killer draw: three of their four round-robin games were against the three medal-winning teams. They tied the Kodiaks and lost the other two.
Had they been able to beat the Kodiaks — and the Kodiaks’ goalie made a tough save at the final horn — the Devil Dogs would have advanced to the playoff round and the Kodiaks would have been ousted.
Final thoughts
In a way, I’d like my son to win every tournament he plays because I want him to be happy, but in another way, I don’t really care about winning at all. It’s not the important thing.
If it was, the right thing to do would have been to play Gold instead of Platinum, but by doing that, the team would never really know how good they are.
I’m proud of the boys for having the heart to play against the best teams, even if it meant going home without the medal they might have won playing Gold.
All of the kids have been playing hockey long enough. They have lots of medals.
To me, it doesn’t make sense to stop trying to get better just to pick up one more medal.