By Michael Joel-Hansen

Hockey Day in Shellbrook kicks off

Jan 19, 2019 | 7:00 AM

The puck has officially dropped in Shellbrook.

The town is marking the fourth-annual Hockey Day in Shellbrook. Hockey Day is a big fundraiser for the community, with all of the money raised going to pay for upgrades and improvements to the town’s arena.

The festivities got underway Friday afternoon. Stephanie Gosselin, who sits on the Hockey Day in Shellbrook Fundraising Committee told paNOW about how it all kicked off.

“We started the day off with our community skate, so we have all of the kids here from Kindergarten to Grade 5,” she said.

Very cold weather conditions led to organizers having to make some changes.

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“Frigid temperatures today caused us to cancel our street hockey tournament this evening,” said Gosselin.

The cold temperatures did also had some effect on the community skate as buses in the area were not running, and some kids were not able to make it. The local senior’s home was also not able to take part as planned

“The last three years we’ve brought the seniors from the nursing home down and we actually have little skies that we put on their wheel chairs, so we have a couple of powerful volunteers who come and skate them around, unfortunately they called last night and had to cancel,” she said.

Gosselin said having to deal with cold weather is nothing new for organizers as the conditions have not generally been cooperative.

“We’ve had brutal weather every year, I don’t know why this weekend seems to not cooperate with Mother Nature,” she said.

Looking forward, Gosselin said they did not expect to have to make any more changes as the rest of the events planned were set to be indoors.

“It’s still going to be a great weekend, we have tons planned,” she said.

Gosselin said they were happy about the number of people who turned out and didn’t feel the weather would down the spirits of people looking to come out.

“People are still so excited to come out and support the event,” she said.

Saturday will see an initiation hockey tournament, which will start in the morning and finish by early afternoon. This will be followed by an alumni game by the Shellbrook Elks. The games will be capped off with the Prince Albert Northern Bears taking on the Melville Prairie Fire in Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey action.

The evening will finish with a sports and awards banquet featuring Robin Regehr and Roger Millions.

MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn