Tuesday was a mixed day for Yukon’s male hockey team at the 2023 Canada Winter Games.

In the morning, goalie Ashton Fummerton stood tall against P.E.I., facing over 50 shots, as the Yukon boys held on for a 5-3 win over the host team. Captain Gavin McKenna sealed the deal with an empty-net goal, one of three straight he scored in the morning tilt for the natural hatty. Chayce Tuton and Nash Holmes added singles to propel the team to the win and a berth in the qualification round.

The late game for the Yukon featured a showdown for first place in Pool C with Newfoundland and Labrador (NL).

Unfortunately for the Yukoners, the late game didn’t go as well as the early game. In what can only be described as strange scheduling, while the Yukon boys were playing their second game of the day, NL were playing their only game of the day, and it showed, as the Yukoners looked tired and a step behind their NL counterparts.

In the first two periods, Fummerton kept the Yukon in the game with several spectacular saves, none better than a point-blank save in the closing seconds of the first period to keep the Yukon within one. The first period ended with NL up 1-0.

NL’s Caylen Blake struck quickly in the second period at the 1:09 mark to make it 2-0.

A few minutes later, Yukon had a power play, but failed to capitalize, with McKenna having the only good chance skip over his stick on a rebound attempt of a Holmes point shot. Their power play was then negated by a penalty called on a great NL shorthanded scoring chance.

NL added to their lead a couple of minutes later, with Ty Peddigrew scoring into a virtually wide-open net on a 2 on 1 on which Fummerton didn’t stand a chance of stopping.

Halfway through the period, Yukon had another power play opportunity after putting a lot of pressure on NL, but failed to capitalize, with Jase Johnstone hitting a post.

With about 30 seconds left in the period, McKenna also hit the post, but Yukon was able to draw a penalty on the play.

The power play carried over into the third period with NL leading 3-0.

Unfortunately, for the Yukoners, NL’s Peddigrew found himself wide open in front of the Yukon net and beat Fummerton with a great deke, roofing the puck in the process to score the shorty and make it 4-0 NL.

The floodgates opened up a little bit after that, despite Fummerton continuing to make big save after big save in a valiant attempt to keep the game close. Elliot Wright made it 5-0 at the 3:57 mark of period three and Caylen Blake, with his second of the game, made it 6-0 with 8:03 left in the third.

Yukon finally got on the board with 7:30 left, with Jamie King getting the goal. McKenna and Johnstone assisted on King’s icebreaker.

Mason Strong added to NL’s lead shortly after with 6:52 left to make it 7-1 NL.

The Yukoners got another one back with 5:01 to play, with McKenna setting up Johnstone for the goal.

Wright would add another one for NL less than a minute later to complete his hat trick and make the final score 8-2. To his credit, Wright didn’t skate over to the NL bench for the usual goal-scoring celebration, a classy move with the game well in hand for NL.

Yukon drew a late penalty with only 54 seconds left, but couldn’t capitalize on the power play, with McKenna hitting another post.

The Yukon now finds itself in a qualification game against New Brunswick this afternoon at 1 p.m. Yukon time. The good news is that New Brunswick has yet to win a game in the tournament, going 0-3 in the round robin.

Meanwhile, the gymnastics team of Lily Witten, Layla Hombert, Jenna Henderson, Olivia Vangel and Taylor Kennedy began their Canada Winter Games in the team event. The Yukoners performed their beam, floor, bars, and vault routines and scored a collective 103.662 to finish 11th in the event.

At the biathlon range, Cheyenne Tirschmman, in the 7.5 km Female Pursuit, and Cole Germain, in the 10 km Male Pursuit, placed in the top 10 for the second day in a row, both placing eighth.

Isla Hupé just missed a top-10 finish, placing 11th in the Female Pursuit event. Lydia Brown came in 19th and Stella Mueller finished 27th.

Bruce Porter finished 26th and London Matthew 29th in the Male 10 km Pursuit.

The freestyle skiing team put down their slopestyle runs Tuesday. Isaac Maddocks was the highest placing Yukoner, scoring 64.00 points for his two runs. Alex Wilson scored 51.17 points and Jacob Robertson registered 49.17 points.

The freestyle team was finally able to hit the Big Air slopes after rain postponed the events on Monday.

Maddocks scored 48 points and Robertson came in just behind with 46.40 points. Maddocks and Robertson finished 16th and 17th in the event, respectively.

The speed skaters were back on the short track for the culmination of the 1500 m event. Lisa Freeman was 35th overall and Lucas Taggart-Cox was the 28th-quickest skater.

In table tennis, the team event continued. The duos of Melody Qiu and Kalie Bennett, and Krish Sharma and Victor Li played doubles and singles with their results adding to their respective team’s score.

– With files from a Team Yukon press release.