The Rosetown Redwings are back in action this weekend, as the Sask Valley Hockey League sees its first full weekend of action in the new year. The team will begin a home/road doubleheader tonight.

“We play (Friday) here with Outlook coming to town, and Saturday we head to Kenaston,” shared Redwings leading scorer Jared Jagow.

There are only just over a handful of games left in the season for Rosetown in their first season back in the SVHL. They will be shorthanded this weekend with some suspensions, a list that includes Jagow, after a brawl took over the game against Delisle back to end the new year.

We caught up with Jagow as his team gets back on the ice competitively, following some of the players lacing it up for a special “Christmas Clash” alumni game. The game started as a quick group chat between buddies, and ended up in a spectacle at the local rink as the game saw likely over 100 fans.

“A bunch of the guys don’t play anymore, so I think we were originally going with 9-10 guys on each team. We were just texting people to see if anyone wanted to get together, and honestly it was just going to be a rec game, just to get out and do something. But (the guys) took a hold of it, and it ended up being an alumni game which is cool.”

Jagow credits Keegan McAvoy for taking the idea to Scott Murdoch, who has no problem producing content for the Redwings, and he was so happy to see everything that followed. Jagow himself has sparked some goodwill with his #GoalsForGaspers campaign this season, and many in the area have followed suit with some fun ways to raise money over the past several months.

“Keegan took that away, and blew it up. One of the other team's players came into the room just before warm-ups, and said, ‘guys, there is a couple hundred people out there.’ I said no way, there’s not that many people coming to watch on a -30 night,” said Jagow.

The simple rec game that turned into a great fundraiser saw over $12,000 raised. Some donations were likely welcome at the door, but the majority of the money came from fun wagers to fit the game such as seeing if a retired players jersey would still fit, among other fun things to watch out for.

Similar to the Goals for Gaspers weekend held against the Eston Ramblers earlier on, the fanfare ended up being the best part with all of the different people coming together to support the game. Jagow noted one fun wager from the Kindersley Jr Klippers, seeing how many goals alumni player Kevin Aylward would score and donating $27 for each of the former Klippers goals.

It was just awesome to see the community come together once again according to Jagow, who may feel like a broken record after commenting on all of the support seen this winter, and over the past year. He gave thanks to the two above for promoting the event, and then thanked the two captains for #DubbyVsGilly in former players Wilson Johnston and Tyler Gilchrist. The two were more than happy to pick the teams, of players mainly from the undefeated Rosetown Redwings team the SVHL’s 2011-2012 season.

“It was originally going to be just showing up to the rink if you want to watch, and then donations at the front door,” said Jagow, “But then it turned into wagers like ‘Is Gilly going to take a penalty in the first five minutes’, which was bound to happen with him.”

The teams drafted turned out to be fairly even, as the game went to a shootout, with Team Gilly coming out as champions 9-8.

Find some great content on the Rosetown Redwings Twitter page, as the senior team gears up for their return to action. To close out our conversation, Jagow shared just how much fun everyone had at the simple game that snowballed into something a lot greater. It was great for him as a current player to get back on the ice with some former teammates, even noting some nerves from a majority of the same players that helped the team go undefeated with 30+ wins once upon a time.

“It wasn’t a blowout, everybody went hard and there was the odd the odd hit. Guys get competitive right?” remarked Jagow.

Perhaps the recent alumni game in Rosetown is going to spark itself into existence for years to come. Regardless, the community showed out once again as the calendar flipped to 2022, where there will hopefully be even more opportunities to see money raised for great causes around the west central area.

RRedwings Alumni Team PhotoPhoto via @RRedwings on Twitter