Stouffville and Wellington deliver entertaining hockey in opening game of semi-finals

The Dukes celebrate their 2-1 overtime victory over the Stouffville Spirit on Sunday night. The Dukes lead the series 1-0.

The Wellington Dukes thrilled their fans with another wildly entertaining and ultimately victorious playoff game on Sunday.

The Stouffville Spirit came into the semifinal OJHL series having knocked off the league-leading Newmarket Hurricanes. All season long Newmarket was ranked among the top five teams in the country (the Dukes spent most of the season in the top 10). But Stouffville made some key personnel additions at the trade deadline that have propelled this team deeper into the playoffs than even they expected.

In net, 6-foot, 4-inch Jon Hall has been solid since coming over from a dismal Collingwood team. Twenty-year-old Tyler vonEngelbrecten has brought much-needed scoring punch to the Stouffville side, as has the addition of Jack Carradonna acquired early in the season.

Stouffville opened the scoring in the first after a bad Dukes giveway at their blueline. In a blink of an eye, Stouffville Captain Matt Neal spun around and made a cross-ice pass onto the stick of winger Christian Finch poised on the face-off dot. His one-time shot sailed past Jordan Ruby as he leaped to his left in a valiant attempt to snare the puck.

The same Dukes line that coughed up the puck redeemed themselves two minutes later. Braden Kavaratzis carried the puck deep and fired a low square shot on net. Cam Yuill picked up the rebound and slid it to Jeff Stanton, who tapped the puck into the open side to tie the game.

Then the teams played the next 55 minutes without a goal. There were, however, plenty of chances—most, though not all, orchestrated by the Wellington squad. Stouffville’s Jon Hall was full value in net, stoning several full or partial Wellington breakaways. With his Dan Dunnlike reach Hall managed to cover effectively the entire bottom third of the net, no matter how clever or imaginative the setup.

It was also a game unmarred by a barrage of penalties. The Dukes had the only man-advantage as Stouffville’s Jordan Bean sat for two minutes for roughing. But that was it.

The rest was thrilling end-to-end hockey.

In overtime the Dukes settled the outcome early. Darcy Greenaway streaked down the right wing and fired a low shot through a defencemen. The rebound came back to Joe Zarbo skating down the opposite wing. Zarbo fired through the second Spirit defender into the yawning net.

With the win the Dukes now lead the semifinal series 1-0. Next game is set for Stouffville on Thursday. Game three is set for Friday in Wellington and game four will be in Stouffville on Sunday.

In the only other semifinal series the Oakville Blades and Kingston Voyageurs were sawed off at one game apiece on Tuesday morning. Oakville managed to smother the potent Kingston offence in game one, skating to a 1-0 win. But back in Kingston the Vees opened up their scoring vault-toppling Oakville by a 9-1 score.

STREETSVILLE AND COBOURG MERGE

In the first of what is expected to be a handful of transactions aimed at reducing the number of teams in the OJHL, the Cobourg Cougars and the Streetsville Derbys announced last week that they had agreed to merge their organizations. The combined team will play out of Cobourg and will continue to be known as the Cougars.

By the numbers

By Dave Brown

The Spirit power play has been running at 26.6 per cent compared to the Dukes 24.6 per cent. The Spirit PK is at 88.9 per cent compared with the Dukes 88.0 per cent.

Spirit top power play goal scorers: Gunovski, #10, Neal, #22, and vonEngelbrechten, #24. Spirit top shorthanded goal guy: Finch, #7.

Spirit NCAA bound: Caradonna, #3, (Geneseo), Serville, #4, (Michigan) and Neal, #22, (RPI).

The Spirit have four 20 year olds which includes APJ # 92 Justin MacDonald. He was the leading scorer (37 points in 36 games) with the Pickering Panthers when they released him in January. The Spirit didn’t have any Junior ‘A’cards left so they did a “Zappia” move and signed him to a Junior ‘C’ card. The difference being that his Junior ‘C’ team is still playing and he’s used up his 10 games at Junior ‘A.’ His Junior ‘C’ team was knocked out on Sunday.