(The Ottawa Valley Silver Seven U11AA competitive hockey team play in District 4 of the hockey club and in which Stittsville is a member. The winning team players are league champions for the 2022-23 season. Photos: Ottawa Valley Silver Seven, twitter)
The U11 AA Ottawa Valley Silver Seven team had a dominant 2022/2023 season that finished just as strongly as it started.
The AA team, coached by David Chipman, had an impressive 9-0 start to the season, beating teams by dozens of points. However, every season will have its moments of resilience and challenges. The Silver Seven boys would be handed their first loss of the season on November 27, 2022, when the Ottawa Sting, their most formidable competitor, shut them out in a 2-0 victory.
Ottawa Valley would not let this loss bring them down though, quite the opposite actually. That was the only game the boys dropped the entire season. They finished the regular season with a record of 19-1, and by no means of luck. They ended up with 151 goals for and only 39 against. This notable goals for and against record came from the help of goalies Noah Shafaee and Patrick Daoust. Shafaee led the league with 10 wins while Daoust led the league in goals-against average, with a 1.70.
The significant wins, however, were also a byproduct of the immense goal-scoring of this team. Their effective offence throughout the season was led by leading goal scorer Ryder Utronkie who recorded 34 goals on the season and points leader DJ Meisner who had 52 points including a league-leading 28 assists.
Not surprisingly, the Ottawa Valley Silver Seven U11 AA team finished the regular season in first place with 38 points, four points ahead of the second-place Ottawa Sting. The team would take this lead into their final playoff tournament, hosted by the Ottawa Valley Aces, over the weekend of February 24-26.
On their last weekend, the boys kept rolling with the same dominance they had in the regular season. On Friday, February 24th, Silver Seven played their toughest game against the Sting to start their tournament and won 5-3. DJ Meisner cashed in on all five goals, recording two goals and three assists.
The U11s would go on to win their next three round-robin games including a 10-3 win against the Nepean Raiders including a three-goal effort from Kane Neilsen and a 13-0 win over the Gloucester Rangers in which two players (DJ Meiser and Ryder Utronkie) recorded hat tricks and Hudson Dolinki had a game-leading four goals.
To end off the playoffs and their season, the boys polished off their undefeated weekend with a 4-0 win over the Gloucester Rangers in the finals. Meiser would finish his weekend with another hat trick in the final game.
It’s no secret that this team knew how to score goals, but it was the two goalies’ abilities to stop them that carried this U11 team to their perfect finish. Patrick Daoust led the playoffs with 3 wins and had the highest goals-against average (1.00) allowing only three goals in three games. Noah Shafaee was close behind him on the leaderboard with two wins and a 3.00 goals-against average.
Congratulations to the U11 AA Ottawa Valley Silver Seven on an incredible season!
An amazing achievement, congratulations are well deserved.