The St. Paul’s Crusaders pulled off the double on Monday night in Portage la Prairie.
The city champion Crusaders added a provincial title with an 8-4 victory over the Vincent Massey Trojans in the AAAA High School Hockey final. The Crusaders successfully repeated as Manitoba champs and have now won the province in three of the last four years.
St. Paul’s scored the game’s first two goals to get out to an early lead. But the Trojans responded with back to back goals before the end of the first period and it was 2-2 after the first frame. The Crusaders went ahead for good in the second period and built up a three goal advantage. The Trojans pulled their goalie trailing 7-4 but the Crusaders scored into the empty net to secure their seventh AAAA high school hockey title in school history.
Connor Stewart and Dylan Moll each scored twice in the win for the Crusaders. Kieran Guttormson, Ethan Lewis, Kieran Ursel, and Brennan Ostir had the other goals for St. Paul’s.
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Jared Bucci, Mason Froese, Skylar Tremblay and Trevor Rusnak had goals in the loss for Vincent Massey.
The game was a rematch of last year’s provincial final where St. Paul’s was also victorious. The Crusaders had just three regulation losses all season long, regular season, playoffs and provincials included.
St. Paul’s also won both the city and provincial championships in 2014.
WATCH: Highlights of AAAA High School Hockey Final