By James Mackintosh
The Dunlop Fuels/Home Hardware Novice BB team has finished their WOAA Novice ‘Twolan’ Division playoff series, losing two games straight in a final best-of-three series against the Kincardine Kinucks.
After losing to the league-leading Goderich team before March Break, the Novice Team entered the consolation rounds and fought hard to win one of the two spots for the finals against Kincardine by sweeping the Walkerton Capitals in two games, both by shut-out victories.
The two games against Kincardine were action-packed and kept the crowd guessing to the end. The Storm showed how far they had come this season with some excellent team work and gritty play.
Game one of the series was played on Monday March 22 at the Plex in Port Elgin. The Storm pulled ahead in the first period with two goals by Cam Lightfoot but by the end of the 2nd period Kincardine had evened the score and they went into the third with 2 goals each.
The third period saw Kincardine score two more times to put the score at 4-2. With a minute and a half to go, the Storm pulled goalie Dex Wasylishyn and with 30 seconds to go Cam Lightfoot completed his hat-trick to bring the Storm to within a goal of the Kinucks.
Despite a focused attack on the Kincardine goal, the remaining 30 seconds was not enough time and Kincardine kept their lead to win the game 4-3.
Game two of the series played in Kincardine on Wednesday March 24. The crowd was buzzing and the Storm went at the game hard, knowing what they had to do to keep their playoff hopes alive.
Sam Maksymyk scored the first and only Storm goal in the first period popping the puck over the goalie’s pads. The Kinucks responded 5 minutes later with a power-play goal (the result of a questionable tripping penalty) putting the game at 1-1. The score did not change throughout the next two periods and the game went into a 10 minute, sudden-death overtime.
After only a minute and a half of overtime play The Kinucks landed a lucky shot in the net from a tough angle, winning them the game and the series.
The loss was difficult for the young Storm team who clearly dominated Kincardine throughout the game, but they took the loss with their usual good humour and sportsmanlike attitude.
The playoffs are over and the season will wrap up this weekend with a final one-day tournament in Mount Forest.
This has been a great season for the Novice BB team. They have improved immensely over the last 6 months and the results of their continued effort were very apparent in the last few weeks as the team came together and showed some real maturity and determination in the way they played their final games. Well done Storm, we are proud of you!
Our thanks go out to the coaches, trainers and managers who have put so much time into working with the team this year and doing all the hard work that is necessary to make the regular season, playoffs, tournaments (and parties!) happen so smoothly. Thanks Trevor, Adam, Paul, Andrew, George and Courtney.
Looking forward to next year!