Oct 16, 2016 | Paul Jones | 799 views
John MacDonald Memorial Tournament
A weekend of hard work resulted in the team becoming tournament finalists.
The team started the tournament against the hometown St. Catharines team on Friday afternoon. Our boys came out playing hard and were rewarded with a dominant 4-1 win.
The next game of the round robin was against Brampton, early Saturday morning. We were the better team for the first two periods and put it away utilizing some great passing, and keeping the opposition buried in their end for a good part of the third period. Final score 5-0.
Our third game was a little tighter battle against a chippy team from Orillia. Goals were hard to come by for both teams, and it resulted in a 1-1 tie. Maybe not our best effort, but the tie was good enough to win the team's pool, put us in second place overall, and most importantly move the team on to the semi-finals on Sunday.
The semi-final game was against Waterloo. They are a talented team from the East/Central Alliance loop who sit atop the league and are undefeated. We told the boys that if they believed, and stuck with the game plan, they could come away with a win. The team battled hard defensively against the attack from the Waterloo team, and managed to hold them at bay. We then opened the scoring with a goal on a rush and great high short side shot. Waterloo continued to make it tough on our team into the second, but we managed to score again and increase the lead 2-0, putting the pressure on the opposition. Waterloo was able to score on the power play in the third, but we held on with some gritty defense and came away with the win. This put the team into the finals.
Our final game was against Oakridge who had won every game of the tournament. This team sits atop of the West loop of the Alliance league. Our team worked hard, but was unable to put anything behind a strong Oakridge goaltender. The opposition was able to score in both the first and second, and added an empty net goal resulting in a 3-0 loss.
It was a disappointing loss in the finals for the players, but a great overall result and tournament for this team. So much improvement has already taken place and it is showing on the ice. Still plenty of things to learn, which means even better results could be on the horizon. Let's keep up the work.
Great work by the team to come away with this result in St. Catharines.