The CTC Atoms attended the Roy Beechey Memorial Rep Hockey Tournament
in Tillsonburg on the weekend but despite their best efforts, failed to advance
past the round-robin portion of the tourney.
The Kinucks first game was played Fri afternoon against the Petrolia Boys and ended in a 0-0 tie. Ryan Tanner was solid in net, stopping everything thrown his way, including a couple of heated goal mouth scrambles and a Petrolia breakaway in the second frame. Kincardine enjoyed a six second 2 man advantage at the end of the second period but failed to capitalize.
In what appears to be a growing rivalry, Game 2 on Friday evening saw the Kinucks face off against the Listowel Cyclones, a team that the Kincardine boys had defeated the previous weekend. The CTC Atoms came out flying with Wilson Shipp outracing the Listowel goalie to the puck, deking him cleanly and burying the goal just 38 seconds into the tilt. Listowel came back with a vengeance after the goal with Gordie Reaume holding the fort during the furious onslaught. Kincardine started the second frame with the 1-0 lead but also with a four minute Listowel power play to kill, due to a dubious head shot call at end of the first. Listowel took full advantage of their fortunes and scored a goal on each of the two minutes, the first coming 32 seconds into the second and the 2-1 goal coming just 40 seconds later. With the Kincardine squad back on their heels, Listowel scored 2 more in a span of three minutes to take a 4-1 lead. A goalie change by Kincardine kick-started the Kinucks out of their torpor, and they played well the rest of the way, holding Listowel off the board but unable to tally any comeback markers for a final score of 4-1 for Listowel.
If they had any thought of advancing, Saturday morning’s game against Dorchester was a must-win for the Kinucks. Dorchester certainly wasn’t going to lie down and allow that to happen as they scored the first goal of the game just four minutes in. It would have been easy for the Local boys to slack off at this point, but that not being their nature, they turned up the heat, despite having the equalizer waved off due to a high stick. With a 5 on 3 man advantage in the middle of the second frame, the boys showed some patience, passed the puck well until Jordan Beisel fed Jordan Moulton who went high stick to tie the game. This tying goal energized the Kinucks who then scored 4 unanswered markers to seal the deal. The first was a break-away shortie by Jordan Moulton who kicked down a pass at the Kincardine blue line, sped in and deked the goalie to slide it home. Mid-way through the third period with Kincardine on a power-play, Jordan Beisel bulged the twine on a sweet set-up from Mitch Pyke and Darcy Scott. Two minutes later, with Dorchester trying to close the gap, Wilson Shipp was sent on a break-away by Nathan Andrews and he too made no mistake in deking the goalie and potting another. With just one minute remaining, Cameron Renaud dug the puck away from the Dorchester defenceman at centre ice and sent Jordan Moulton in to bury his hat-trick goal. This led to a final score of 5-1 and the Kinucks semi-final berth was now in the hands of the just beaten Dorchester squad who had to beat Petrolia by two goals for the locals to advance. Alas, it was not to be as Dorchester did win, but only by a goal, so the CTC squad was denied a semi-final berth by mere percentage points. The weekend was a great team building experience for the CTC Atoms and gave them a good perspective on what it’s going to take to be successful. Teamwork, positioning, and most of all, hard work both in games and in practice.