Cam Yuill scored a pair of goals including the overtime winner on Sunday in Whitby.

Dukes closing the gap

The last time the Dukes faced St. Michael’s, their highly touted netminder and a pair of the team’s top forwards were away in Langley skating for Team Canada East. The Dukes won that game in Wellington 5-3. But would they fare as well if St. Mike’s had had their full roster at their disposal?

The answer to that question came on Friday night—three months after the teams met in November. Adrian Ignagni, the highly regarded Buzzers netminder, was yanked after allowing six goals in two periods. The forwards absent in November’s match, Daniel Milne and Michael Neville, mustered just a point each as the Dukes mowed through Bathurst and St. Clair on Friday night.

Darcy Murphy and Anthony Taylor earned a hat trick each as they soundly thumped St. Mike’s 7-3. Guillaume Naud had a goal and a pair of helpers. David Pratt earned three assists from the blueline. Four of the Dukes’ goals came with the man advantage.

Newcomer Chad Cummings earned his first point as a Duke setting up Taylor’s second goal.

It was also the first game for netminder Jared Lockhurst in a Dukes jersey. Lockhurst turned back 40 shots for his first win with his new team on Friday. (Both Cummings and Lockhurst played with Villanova last season to the quarterfinals before being dispatched by the Dukes in five games.)

St. Mike’s has lost only seven games in regular time this season—five have come at the hands of East Division clubs.

Tenacity up and down the ice has been the Josh Gervais’s calling card all season long. His gritty work along the boards set up the first of Cam Yuill’s two goals on Sunday

OT THRILLER
Whitby has played below the radar much of the season. The Fury are wellcoached and the players follow the script well—clogging up the centre of the ice and badgering the puck carrier from every direction. An effective defensive game has kept this squad in virtually every game they’ve played—the decision more often than not decided by a single goal. Lacking real fire power, Whitby needs lowscoring games to win.

In three previous games this season, the Dukes and Whitby played to identical 2-1 scores—the Fury taking two, the Dukes just one win.

Along the way Whitby has filled in some gaps—adding snipers Matt Davis and Mike Hennessey from Lindsay and Peterborough respectively.

With Whitby breathing down the Dukes’ necks in fourth spot, Sunday’s match was sure to be tough.

It was.

The Dukes came out flying with the drop of the puck—gaining the Whitby zone and hemming the Fury deep. Josh Gervais did the heavy lifting in the corner, digging out the puck and sliding it back to Kyllian Kirkwood on the point. Kirkwood found Cam Yuill in the high slot. Yuill fired a hard wrist shot through traffic into Whitby’s net. It was the Dukes’ first shot on net.

Whitby is used to playing close games and weren’t thrown by the early goal. They played tough and close. Before the period was over Kirkwood chased the puck into the Dukes corner lost his footing and skidded wide of the puck. This allowed the Whitby forechecker to pick up the loose puck and serve it to Matt Davis in the slot. Davis tied the score.

The Fury took the lead in the second period as David Shore scooped up a rebound and shovelled the puck past Lockhurst.

In the third period both sides generated good scoring chances—the Fury missing a yawning maw and the Dukes ringing the Whitby post. But it was a low hard shot from Darcy Murphy from the point that ended up on the scoreboard. Jan Kaminsky managed to redirect the shot to earn the marker.

Murphy had a chance to give the Dukes the lead with two minutes left in the game but the Fury’s Trevor Feaver snagged the bullet from near point blank range.

In overtime the Dukes were the more determined team. David Pratt forced a Whitby forward to cough up the puck at the blueline. He slid the puck to Cam Yuill who shifted, then fired a hard shot top corner. The Dukes skated home with two key points.

UP NEXT: WHITBY AND LINDSAY
The games don’t get easier this week. After four games on the road the Dukes return to the Essroc Arena in Wellington on Friday night to host Whitby. The Fury are just four points back of the Dukes and dream of nudging ahead of the Dukes in the final stretch.

Regardless of where they finish in the standings, Whitby will be a tough playoff contender.

Lindsay knocked off Trenton on Friday and are winners of four of their five games so far in January. After seemingly drifting toward a quick season end, the Muskies have been playing with added fire since the Christmas break—averaging 5.6 goals per game in their last five games.

The Dukes face off against the Muskies at 7:30 on Sunday night in Lindsay.

Where are they now?

The Wellington Dukes trace their hockey roots to the former Belleville Bobcats franchise, purchased in 1989 by 10-year operators of a successful Wellington Junior ‘C’ representative who moved the acquired squad to the tiny Village. This is the sixteenth in a series of tracking down former Duke Players.

NAME: PAUL KARPOWICH
In my 18 years following the Dukes I have heard many times the team being called a “Goalie Factory” and Paul Karpowich is another one in a long line of players to help give it that nickname. The Thunder Bay, Ontario native played for the Brooks Bandits of the Alberta Junior Hockey League during the 2006-07 season before showing up at the Dukes’ camp in the fall of 2007 as an eighteen year old.

Once he made the Dukes team an earlyseason injury caused him to miss quite a bit of time but he bounced back to finish strong and helped the squad end up in first place in the East Division of the OJHL. His outstanding numbers during the regular season, 2.15 goals-against average (second best in the league) and .922 save percentage (fourth best in the league) carried on into the playoffs as the Dukes reached the league semi-finals after sweeping the Kingston Voyageurs in four games.

After just one season with the Dukes, Paul earned an NCAA Division One scholarship with Clarkson University located in Potsdam, New York. It’s very rare that a freshman becomes the starting goaltender but Paul jumped right into the top spot immediately. Now in his fourth and final year at school majoring in Business, he has put up some spectacular numbers so far as his 2.06 GAA and .934 save percentage would indicate.

The Hobey Baker Award is an annual award given to the top National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s ice hockey player. Paul has been nominated and fans can vote for him online by going to the website www.hobeybakeraward.com

DID YOU KNOW?
In June, 2008 Paul was drafted by the St. Louis Blues. This was the third consecutive year a Dukes player was selected directly from their team, the only Junior ‘A’ squad based in Ontario to have accomplished this feat during that time.