| Joe Erwin’s goal off a nifty deke in the shootout ended any shot the Rosebush Fuels Devils had at advancing further in the playoffs and at the same time let the Bush Furniture Panthers breath a huge sigh of relief after blowing a two-goal lead late in the third period.
Bush’s led 3-2 after two periods then when Dave Baker upped the lead to 4-2 early in the third set it appeared then that the season was lost for the Devils. But as soon as the Panthers thought it was safe to coast the Devils pounced with two quick goals just over a minute apart midway through the period to set the stage for an exciting, 3-on-3 extra set and Erwin’s eventual winning tally in the shootout that followed.
After a thrilling five-minute overtime period that saw both goaltenders come up with game-saving stops on a few occasions, the Devils’ Mike McKeown shot first in the shootout, giving Rosebush the lead, but Rudy Capogreco stoned the next four shooters to preserve the quarter-final victory for Bush Furniture and help send them on to this coming Saturday’s semi-finals.
In the Tweed Saturday Night Hockey League’s only other quarter-final matchup, March 18, the Bogart Tweedsmuir Flyers pulled off a mild upset in doubling up on the Trudeau Park Rangers 4-2. As a result Bogart will take on the highly touted Thomasburg Toros Saturday at 7:30 in one semi-final while Bush Furniture faces the defending champion Tweed IGA Senators in the other at 6:30. At 9:pm the two winners hook up in the championship game.
Against Rosebush the Panthers got goals from both Todd Buchanan and Erwin in the shootout before Capogreco brought his team to their feet in jubilation after stopping Shawn Lesage on the Devils final shot to give his team the heart-stopping one goal win (it goes into the record books as a 5-4 victory). Against the defending champs this coming weekend, however, Bush’s will have to be on their toes from start to finish because a late-game siesta facing IGA will undoubtedly give the Panthers nightmares with little hope of waking up with a win in overtime or a shootout. They do have the firepower to pull it off though (Bush’s led the league in scoring during the regular season) but at the same time they’ll have to contain a very speedy IGA offence. During the round-robin portion of the post season the Senators beat the Panthers 6-3 and finished 2nd in the ‘A’ pool behind Thomasburg, thus gaining one of two quarter-final byes.
Bush’s got goals from Paul Buchanan, Erwin, Baker and a mystery shooter the referee couldn’t identify through a goal-mouth scramble while the Devils countered with one apiece from Chad Courneyea, John Burns, Dan Knightly and Lesage.
Bogart-Tweedsmuir will also be in tough this Saturday when they try to knock off the regular season champion Toros in semi-final play. Thomasburg, 2-0-and-1 in the ‘A’ round-robin, is the lone unbeaten team remaining in the playoffs and own two of the loop’s most prolific snipers in Kirby Tebo and Rory Wilson. The Toros also boast one of the more solid netminders in the league with Randy Thompson who finished the regular season with the second best goals-against-average at 2.84, just slightly higher than Senator Lawrence Cassibo’s 2.57.
On the other hand the Flyers are by no means going to be an easy walk for Thomasburg either. They do posses a potentially explosive offence themselves and defend their own end with more grit than most.
Bogart held period leads Saturday of 2-1and 3-2, getting two goals each from Leon Clement and Robert Thurston as they eliminated Trudeau Park with the 4-2 triumph. Chris Newlands and Casey Trudeau replied for the Rangers. |