(Battlefords AAA Sharks/Facebook)

By Ryan Lambert

Calgary Firestarter Tournament

Battlefords Sharks U18 AAA Wins 2025 Calgary Firestarter Tournament Ahead of the Season

Sep 16, 2025 | 1:58 PM

Each year, rep girls hockey teams gather in Calgary for the Firestarter Tournament, an event meant to showcase female hockey talent and get the teams kicked off for the year. It is one of the elite tournaments on the calendar for girls rep hockey, and it couldn’t have gone any better for the Battlefords Sharks U18 AAA team.

Each team in the tournament was guaranteed at least four games. Three round robin games then a quarterfinal. After the quarterfinals, the highest two remaining seeds out of the final four teams would advance to the finals.

In the round robin, the Sharks faced the Fraser Valley Rush, Rocky Mountain Raiders and the Red Deer Sutter Fund Chiefs. They went 3-0 in that round, outscoring their opponents 14-5 through the first three games heading into the quarterfinals.

Their quarterfinal matchup came against the Lloydminster PWM Steelers, and it was pure domination. They had seven different goalscorers and went on to win it 9-0. Since they were 4-0 after the quarterfinals, they earned a spot in the final round. That game was against the defending national champions, the Edmonton Jr Oilers.

Battlefords took a 2-0 lead into the third period of the finals before Edmonton scored to bring it within one goal with less than five minutes to go. Battlefords held on to win it 2-1 to win the Calgary Firestarter tournament.

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“The girls responded extremely well, and obviously with big score…we understood that when we did what we wanted to do as a team, it actually made us that much more confident in what we could accomplish,” said Sharks head coach Nolan Horbach on the win.

Although the Oilers were a dangerous team, Horbach said that their mentality didn’t waver and they knew they could keep up.

“We felt like we shouldn’t be intimidated by any means. Even though they are the reigning national champions, we knew if we could play our game we would be OK…I was proud of our girls, I think it was a big step from a maturity perspective. As coaches, we could see it.”

Horbach also made it clear that this was a full team effort and credited the entire roster from top to bottom on the tournament win.

“We’re just extremely deep. It didn’t matter, we just opened the gate and we can roll our lines. We’ve got two really good goalies and then our girls in the back end…It wasn’t just one or two girls that carried us, it was everybody.”

He wasn’t lying. All but two players got at least one point in the tournament. The only two that didn’t get a point were the goalies, and they contributed well between the pipes as well. Both goaltenders had a save percentage of above .900 per cent, and a goals against average of below two.

The Sharks coach talked about the biggest takeaway that they got from the tournament heading into the season.

“For us, it’s going to be just making sure that if we come to the rink focused and play to our standard that we can beat anybody… it gave them a lot of confidence. If we can kind of stick to what we want to do and how we play as a group, I think we have a chance to do some pretty good things this year.”

Horbach acknowledged that he understands that it is still the middle of September, and that there is still a lot of work to do before the Sharks begin their season in Prince Albert on Sept. 27. However, this was a very encouraging sign for a Sharks team with championship aspirations heading into the season.

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Ryan.Lambert@pattisonmedia.com