NWT defeats Alberta North in overtime for U16 male hockey gold

Callum MacLean scored the game-winning overtime goal as the Northwest Territories’ U16 male hockey team upset hosts Alberta North to win Arctic Winter Games gold.

MacLean struck after one minute and 41 seconds of three-on-three overtime to win the game 6-5 for the NWT in front of a partisan crowd in Fort McMurray’s Centerfire Place.

That victory followed gold for the NWT’s juvenile female futsal team, who defeated Yukon 5-0, and for Brooke Smith in curling’s mixed event. Reese Wainman took bronze in that event, while the territory’s U18 male cross-country ski relay team also finished third.

The NWT’s female volleyball team defeated Greenland for bronze while the juvenile male futsal team took silver after a 5-3 defeat in the final against Alberta North.

Both basketball teams took bronze, the male team defeating Nunavut 95-71 and the female team beating Alaska 65-38.

At Centerfire Place, vehicles were strewn haphazardly for blocks around a packed parking lot as Fort McMurray turned up to support Alberta North in the last hockey game of Wood Buffalo 2023.

But MacLean delivered a stunning come-from-behind upset for the NWT’s U16 team, which had trailed 5-3 at one point in the third period.

“Amazing,” said MacLean, who turns 16 later this month.

“Helmets came off, gloves came flying. It’s an unbelievable experience to have the boys surrounding me and cheering.”

The team had practised three-on-three in the lead-up to the Arctic Winter Games, MacLean said, paying tribute to the way players from across the North and those who study in the south had come together and worked as a team for the past week.

Even so, nothing else this week was quite like the atmosphere inside the arena on Saturday.

“It was loud. You can’t hear much going on so you’ve just got to go, and know the chemistry with your guys,” MacLean said.

Asked to rank that experience, he answered: “That’s got to go first.”

The NWT’s victory had the effect of elevating Team NT to third place in the ulu standings. Team NT finished Wood Buffalo 2023 with 43 gold ulus, one ahead of Alberta North’s 42, meaning the reverse result would have meant a fourth-place finish. Yukon placed first with 61 gold ulus ahead of Alaska’s 58.

Based on gold ulu count, Wood Buffalo 2023 marked the NWT’s best Arctic Winter Games performance in at least two decades.

Speed skater Sage Acorn, who contributed four individual gold ulus to Team NT’s tally, carried the NWT flag at the games’ closing ceremony.

The next Arctic Winter Games are only a year away. Because this edition was delayed a year by the pandemic, the whole show will go again next year in Alaska.