Minor peewee Rebellion take tournament gold in shootout

The Rebellion minor peewee A team took home gold at the West Mall Lightning Tournament in early September.

By Frank Garcea

Congratulations to the King Rebellion minor peewee A team, who skated to a 4-3 overtime shootout championship win over the hosting squad at the West Mall Lightning early bird tournament.
Coach Enzo D'Amico wanted to have a pre-season tournament to bring his team together for the start of the new season. This team saw the additions of three new players and a new goalie along with new assistant coaches Matt Marchese, Alex Marchese, Sam Panetta and John Sebastiano. It was important for this team to get to know each other and come together as a team. Coach Enzo went as far as setting up a 4-day on-ice, off-ice mini-camp for his team prior to the start of the tournament.
The division was made of six teams from the OMHA and GTHL, with the top two teams advancing to the final Sept. 8.
The Rebellion had their first win (4-2) against the Toronto Wolverines. On the Friday night, the Rebellion went on to win their second game by a score of 3-0 against the Applewood Coyotes. Saturday morning the Rebellion continued their winning streak (4-1) over the Meadowvale Hawks.
With just one game left in the round robin and a chance to secure first place, the Rebellion fell short of a victory with a tie (2-2) against the Port Credit Storm, yet still advanced to the finals against the tournament hosting team, the West Mall Lightning.
Determined, focused and upset at having tied the night before, the Rebellion came out with one thing in mind at Sunday's final, to win the tournament. Despite playing against the tournament hosting home team and their home crowd, the King Rebellion had their own show of support from the minor atom A team, who had just won their division championship in the same tournament, and the Rebellion peewee A team, who would follow the game in their own division final.
The Rebellions opened the scoring on a goal by Samson Samaroo, and took a 3-2 lead going into the third period with goals from Vincent Cipriani and Samaroo's second goal of the game. But West Mall Lightning would not go down easy, having tied the game with just over eight minutes left and momentum of the game having changed.
With just under six minutes left in the game, the Rebellions took a four-minute penalty. This team would not go down like this, with the defence having played exceptionally well all weekend, forwards coming back and applying strong pressure on both sides of the rink creating turnovers and making passes and the goalie standing on his head making save after save.
With the penalty killed, the game was going to overtime with each team exchanging chances to score in the five minute extra period but none crossing the goal line.
This game would be determined by the penalty shootout, where Samaroo ended up as the only goal scorer to give the Rebellion the championship!
Congratulations to goalie Damiano Panetta, Briggs Battison, Paul Calleja, Owen Lewis, Julian Oppedisano, Vincent Cipriani, Benjamin D'Amico, Luca Garcea, Joseph LeMarca, Cristian Rotiroti, Gianluca Rotiroti, Samson Samaroo, Giovanni Sebastiano, Jayden Torres, and coaching staff.