By Nathan Kanter

AAA Stars sweep weekend games, get back to .500

Oct 31, 2016 | 1:40 PM

The AAA Stars may have turned a corner.

After falling 3-1 to the Saskatoon Contacts on Thursday, they went in to Wilcox over the weekend and won back-to-back games for the first time this season, 3-0 and 3-2 over the Notre Dame Argos.

The Argos came in with only a single win this year but nonetheless, the sweep was crucial for the Stars and should be something they can build off of moving forward.

“We talked about it after the game yesterday in the room – that now we’re at .500, we got two wins, we’ve got some games coming here and we’re going to need to battle hard,” AAA Stars coach Jean Fauchon said in a phone interview on Monday. “The guys still have the goal of they want to make it to Mac’s [AAA World Invitational], so we’ve talked about that.”

Mac’s is a prestigious international midget ice hockey tournament held annually on Boxing Day featuring some of the top midget teams in North America and even Europe.

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The wins will need to keep coming if the Stars are to qualify.

“You’ve got to be in the top four or five [in the SMAAAHL] to get there so we need to keep going forward,” Fauchon said.

The Stars got one win from each of their goaltenders, as Lance Alm got a 24-save shutout on Saturday and Joseph Young stopped 25 of 27 pucks in the 3-2 overtime win on Sunday.

Alm’s .943 save percentage is third in the league for goalies who have played at least five games, and he has the most saves in the league at 300.

Young, meanwhile, got his first win of the year.

“It was good to get Young back in there,” Fauchon said. “He performed well for having not played for the last couple of games. He went in there and stopped a penalty shot that got us a little bit pumped up there in [Sunday’s] game. They both played extremely well.”

Matthew Flodell, Dylan Esau, and Jaden Shewchuk all scored goals in Saturday’s win. On Sunday, Jordan Mish was the overtime hero after the Stars got two power play goals in regulation.

“We changed the [power play] around with our injuries,” Fauchon said, as Austin King-Cunningham and Tyson Myers, who are normally on the power play, didn’t play. “It’s coming. It’s a work in progress and it’s going to be all year. We’re going to continue to work on it every week.”

Discipline, which has plagued this team in the past, could have hurt the Stars again, as they were shorthanded 16 times in the two games.

But, Fauchon said not all of those penalties were earned.

“We were a lot more disciplined this weekend despite the penalties that we did get,” Fauchon said. “There were some that I don’t feel were deserved but we took them and killed them off and kept rolling.”

The Stars don’t have any time to rest, as they are back at it on Wednesday night in Saskatoon against the Blazers.

That will be their fourth game in six days, as they played last Thursday in Saskatoon as well.

“It’s something that they’ve got to get used to,” Fauchon said of the busy schedule. “It builds for the playoffs there when you’re going every second night.”

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.Kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11