The Waste Management Minor Peewees travelled to
Welland on Saturday to meet the Welland Tigers for the fourth time this
year. Somebody raised the lift lock on
the Welland Canal and it was game-on. And this one was a dandy good old
fashioned pond hockey game from start to finish.
Ryan Winter was the goaltender of note for this Tiger hunt and he was up to the task as both teams broke out of the gate like army ants at the shipyard picnic. It was wide open hockey in the first stanza and both teams had some great opportunities to score but the guys between the pipes were stubborn until Welland finally broke the ice with about 5:12 remaining with a well earned marker. But that was OK because it’s fair to say that the Highlanders were playing confident hockey and they didn’t seem to get any bounces up to this point.
And then it happened. Now I want you conjure up an image for me. Do you remember “Leave it to Beaver”? Well, in between shifts that obnoxious Dupont kid, with his very best Eddie Haskell impersonation, leaned over to his defence partner and whispered in his ear. “Hey Ethan, I just heard some joker’s been kickin sand in yer old man’s face over there in Kabul ”. Well it was like kick startin an M1A1 Abrams main battle tank and all of a sudden there was Bullivant loose in the China shop. Well.....June was upset, Ward had a tellin grin on his face and Ethan played the rest of the game like School Boards weren’t invented yet. He earned the www.hockeyshot.ca player of the game award for his effort and the rest of the guys climbed aboard. The Highlanders took control of the rest of Period One but failed to even up the score.
The Second Period saw more of the same end to end action. Captain Jake hits the post. We miss a breakaway. They miss a breakaway. Both teams would not give an inch and any real estate was well earned. Welland scores their second goal of the game in that period with 7:52 remaining but we were still coming on strong. So the Highlanders were down 2-0 going to the Third despite a strong effort by the whole team who were playing confident hockey. Then finally, Noah Johnson put us on the board with a dandy from Jakob Lee and Troy Weber with 9:23 remaining in the period. Ryan Winter and our strong defence kept the door closed and that Johnson kid bangs in another from Ethan Bullivant with 4:52 left in the game. The game was tied 2-2 and that was all she wrote. The shots on goal were 37-30 in favour of the Welland Tigers so you can tell that there was a whole lot of fun happening in the barn on that Saturday afternoon. Thanks to the boys from both teams, it was well worth the trip.
But the weekend wasn’t over yet. The Highlanders loaded up and headed out. Just as soon as they left the QEW in the Hamilton area that sirly talkin woman on their dashboard had them fan out to all points north like yer July fireworks. Such is the life of Highlander hockey players but they would all come back together at noon in the Markdale Arena to meet the Burlington Eagles for game two of this weekend.
Well it was Sunday morning and the old thermometer dropped to 22 below. The power went off sometime during the night and I fell out of bed and broke my pyjamas. My Granddaddy always used to say “A little bit of nippy never hurt anybody”. Now I was never quite sure what he meant by that although I had my suspicions, but I’m starting to know him a little better as I get older myself. I just knew that I probably wasn’t the only one feeling the chill and I was also convinced that at least most of the Highlanders had indoor plumbing by now and they would get their boys to the rink on time. And so they did.
The Burlington Eagles are a tough team to beat when they get it rolling their way and they played well on this day. They held the balance of play in the First Period and scored twice while the Highlanders just couldn’t seem to get on track. But we did have some good chances and the guys were surely competing well. We hoped for better results in Period 2 but such was not the case as the Eagles came out hard on the puck and the ice seemed tilted toward our end. In fact the ice was of such an angle that if the Markdale Arena was your kitchen, you could probably only bake slightly more than half a pie. They scored 4 more times in that period while Noah Solinger did get us on the score sheet with help from Danny Skinner. The score after 2 chapters was 6-1 Burlington. But that was the end of the scoring for this afternoon as the Waste Management Minor Peewees closed the proceedings on a positive note. They never surrendered without a fight and there were some notable efforts from a lot of guys. Let’s just mention the solid play of Noah Solinger our www.hockeyshot.ca player of the game, the always reliable Jakob Lee and Mark Dupont for his effort on the back end. Well done you guys.
And here’s some news. There is a possibility that we could be back to full strength as early as next week as Scotty Chisholm is progressing nicely from his “lower body” injury. We’re not sure what part of his lower body is injured but the cast on his foot has given some of us more intelligent people a small clue.
We are a road show again next Saturday in Burlington and back in Markdale next Sunday when our good ole dirt kickin country boys entertain the St. Catharines Jr. Falcons for a double header at 1:00 o’clock and 5:00 o’clock.
Don’t you dare miss it.
Grandpa