THE AFTERMATH
Final shots on goal favoured the Kodiaks 93-77. Not surprisingly, both goaltenders earned Player of the Game honours.
WHITE: Just for fun [I was watching the shot clock] because it shows the pace of the game and who's kind of taking control at different times. I swear if we re-watch that game I bet myself and York, we would probably say that each of us probably had about 15 or 20 more shots than what was actually listed.
YUEL: Both goalies were insane. It wasn’t like there wasn’t chances, there was chances in every period and just nothing was going in.
HELFRICH: [White] was unbelievable. He was so good for us that tournament. I do remember that Camrose had a lot of great chances in those overtimes and like any good goalie, you make those timely saves regardless of what you do throughout the game and you give your team an opportunity to win,
RYBALKA: What is it called, your coming-out party? That’s what I remember about York, and I was so proud of him. He was so relaxed; it was just like ‘Guys go out and do it, and I’m going to make the save.’ That was the day that I knew it was there, that he was going to play pro.
The Spruce Kings left the CN Centre around 2 a.m., 17 hours before the championship game was scheduled to start. So where does a team go celebrate the most important win in franchise history?
YUEL: You go to Denny’s because it’s the only place open. That’s what we did.
Down the hall, the Kodiaks were faced with the reality of the season ending, and with it the junior careers of Cook and a handful of other players.
YORK: All of a sudden it's over. Instantly all of your twenty-year-old, nineteen-year-old teammates are crying, and you're just like ‘Oh my God, it's actually done.’ The worst part for me was the feeling of ‘What the hell just happened?’
RYBALKA: The most difficult part for me as a coach was to see the players. The tough look in their eyes, the sadness in them, where they’re down and you can see the tears, that’s the tough part. We lost, but for me it’s seeing those poor young men where they’re devastated, that’s the tough thing.
The Spruce Kings had to regroup and face Aurora in the national final. Despite the adrenaline from their semifinal success and a hometown crowd of more than 3,300, Prince George was no match for a Tigers juggernaut that finished the 2006-07 season with 77 wins in 88 games – Aurora claimed its second national championship with a 3-1 victory.
YUEL: It was ok at the beginning of the game, because you’re going off adrenaline and feeding off the crowd, but once that dies down and the flow of the game started, it was really, really tough to get the legs going. Your head’s in it, but the body wouldn’t listen to what the mind was trying to tell it.
HELFRICH: I vividly remember talking about how important that first goal was, and we didn’t get that one. When they went up 1-0, on the bench there was just that feeling of ‘We’ve got to do this and play from behind now?’ Even though it’s only one goal, and it might sound crazy, but I’ll never forget that feeling. You could just feel it on the bench. And the rest of that game it just turned into ‘OK, we’ve got to grind and come back,’ and that was a lot after what we had been through the night before.