Joe McKeown is on a point-a-game pace over his last five games. After 31 games McKeown is just one point shy of his point total for entire regular season last year.

Dukes soundly defeat Kingston, but stumble momentarily in Milton

It is the momentary lapses that have come to trip up the Wellington Dukes this season. Too frequently a strong collective effort for 50 minutes has been extinguished by a couple of bad shifts.

In just the second game of the season the Dukes were in Trenton to face the Golden Hawks. Wellington was up with a 2-1 lead at the end of the first period on goals from Joe McKeown and Steven Deeg.

But in the second, Trenton scored a pair of goals in under two minutes. In the third, the Golden Hawks scored two more—this time just 12 seconds apart. The Dukes lost 6-2. Yet it wasn’t nearly the lopsided win suggested by the score. The Dukes were the better team through much of the game. But when they sagged—their opponents scored.

It has become an infrequent pattern.

The Dukes travelled to Milton on Saturday afternoon. Wellington was looking to remedy the shootout loss given up to the IceHawks inWellington three weeks earlier. Through two periods the game went as planned. The Dukes owned a 3-1 lead on the strength of goals from Kyle Paat, Mike Soucier and Maurizio Colella.

But then it happened again.

Early in the third, Milton scored two goals—34 seconds apart. Suddenly the game that once appeared to be in hand—was tied. And Milton was pressing. It was all the Dukes could do to slow the IceHawk surge. The game was settled in a shootout.

The Dukes came out at the wrong end of this roll of the dice. Of four shooters, only Erick Delaurentis managed to beat the IceHawk netminder.

But the game never should have gone to the shootout—but in a time span of 34 seconds the Dukes traded a victory for a loss.

WELLINGTON 5 – KINGSTON 1
It was a much happier story on Friday as the Dukes took on the Kingston Voyageurs. Kingston was on top of the East when they arrived in Wellington on Friday—but such is the competitiveness of the division that a week can see the rankings turned upside down and back again.

Josh Supryka has been coming on strong in recent games scoring a goal and adding a pair of assists in Friday’s big win over Kingston.

Nevertheless, it was an important game—it seems likely the Voyageurs will be a contender to the end. The Dukes came ready. Through much of the first, it was a tough see-saw battle. The Dukes earned more chances—but the Vees rang the crossbar twice.

Late in the frame—Kyle Paat fired a blast, intentionally it seemed, wide of the net on a power play. The puck bounced sharply back onto Erick Delaurentis’s stick at the edge of the Kingston crease. Delaurentis stuffed it home for his team leading 15th goal.

In the last minute of the period, new Voyageur Michael Crocock tallied to tie the score.

The Dukes bounced back, however, in the second with goals from Mike Soucier and Josh Supryka, his first of three points on the night—silencing the clang of the cowbells brought by Kingston’s fans.

Soucier’s goal was the end of the game for Kingston’s top netminder Alex Brooks-Potts. The night before, Kingston had given up a 4-0 lead—losing 5-4 in a shootout in Aurora. His replacement was Sam Tanguay. He didn’t fare much better. The Dukes scored two more—from Steven Deeg and Joe McKeown.

As the score widened, the Voyageurs became scrappier—attracting a slew of penalties. It didn’t change the outcome— the Dukes skated to an impressive 5-1 victory in front of an appreciative hometown crowd.

STRONG PERFORMERS
After a bit of a rough game against Toronto 10 days ago, 20-year-old blueline Kyle Paat has been on a bit of a tear recently—generating four points in his last two games. He has already matched his goal output of last season.

Sixteen-year-old Josh Supryka has also had good week scoring a pair and adding three assists in his last three games. He has a good accurate shot, and he doesn’t mind mixing it up in the tough ice front of opposing netminders.

And after a bit of a lull upon returning from the World Junior A Challenge in Summmerside, Mike Soucier appears to have rediscovered his scoring touch—potting a goal in each of the Dukes last two games.

UP NEXT: ORANGEVILLE AND TORONTO

By David Brown

ORANGEVILLE FLYERS
When the Wellington Dukes first joined the Metro Junior Hockey League in 1989, one of their rivals was the Henry Carr Crusaders. In 1991 the Crusaders transferred the franchise to become the Weston Dukes. That’s right, for the next two seasons there were two teams known as the Dukes. They then moved to Thornhill in 1993 where they were known as the Islanders, Rattlers and Thunderbirds over the next few years. They then played one season known as the Toronto Thunderbirds before becoming the Villanova Knights. Wellington fans may remember an exciting playoff series between the two clubs in 2011 when the Dukes went on to win their second Dudley Hewitt Cup. Right after that series, they made their last move to Orangeville to become the Flyers.

The current team plays in the tough West Division, and while they have struggled to date, they do have a win over the Trenton Golden Hawks. Number 27 Lucas Smilsky is a 16-year-old forward who leads the team in scoring while number 14 Austin Rigney is one of their top defencemen who played in the OJHL playoff finals last spring with the Newmarket Hurricanes. Taylor Welsh and Wyatt Pickrel share net duties.

TORONTO LAKESHORE PATRIOTS
This is the old Bancroft Hawks franchise that played in the OJHL from 1998 to 2007. They then moved to become Upper Canada HC for one more season before becoming Upper Canada Patriots. In their last season as Upper Canada they were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Dukes in 2011. The next year they became the Toronto Lakeshore Patriots and made it all the way to the league semifinals before losing to the Whitby Fury in 5 games. Last spring they dropped an opening-round playoff series to the Georgetown Raiders.

The current team has been firing on all cylinders with number 27 Kevin Shier leading the way in points while number 77 Michael Prapavessis leads their defence offensively. Mark Manolescu and Jeremy Helvig share net duties. As of this writing, the Patriots are not only in first place in the South Division, their .719 winning percentage is tops in the 22 team OJHL.