Another Successful Weekend for the Novice LL White Team
The White Novice LL team had 2 games this weekend against the Walkerton Capitols and the Minto Mad Dogs. The first game Friday night was against the Capitols who were looking to avenge their 5-2 loss to us previously in Walkerton. It was nice to see everyone present and healthy after missing players last weekend due to sickness.
The first period was typical, no goals and very few scoring opportunities. Our defence was solid as usual and Seth saw very few scoring chances against him. In the second, our team woke up and started putting pressure on their defence in their end. Our scoring opportunities came off of turn overs in our end. Just over a minute into the second Nathan opened up the scoring, unassisted. Two minutes later Dustin scored off of a pass from Jacob. This left the score 2-0 after two periods. Nathan and Dustin both scored unassisted goals in the third period to seal the 4-0 victory. Seth had the shut out but our defence didn't give them many scoring opportunities.
The next morning we traveled to Palmerston to battle the Mad Dogs. In our previous encounter, the Mad Dogs embarrassed us beating us 7-0. The Minto team has been the best team all year with 14 wins, 2 ties and NO losses. They have scored 139 times and only allowed 34 goals in 16 games this year, wreaking havoc in the league. The good news was that our team had been playing very good hockey lately and was much improved since our first game. This was an exciting game to watch. Our game plan was to play smart positional hockey and not let them get breakaways or let their defence wind up his big shot on Seth. The play was mostly in our end but we did a much better job on the wing advancing the puck out past their defence. We did generate some scoring opportunites with Sara in front and Nathan almost getting a good shot off. The Mad Dogs didn't give our forwards much of a chance to get free with the puck, but we did the same to them. When Minto did get some scoring chances, Seth stood strong and kept the puck out. There were a few nervous moments with goal mouth scrambles and the puck sitting on the goal line but Seth covered it forcing the referees to blow the play dead. With the score ending tied 0-0, we became the first team to shut-out the Mad Dogs all year, and came home with a well earned point in the standings. Coach Alex stepped up and bought the team some well earned slushies (thanks to the Coombs).
In the past 2 weeks our team has really come into their own only allowing 2 goals in the past 5 games with 4 straight shut out's. That is very impressive and we hope to carry this momentum into the next weekend. We play Walkerton again Friday and then have a tournament in Drayton on Saturday.
Congratulations Kids,
Coach Paul