| After nailing down first place in the regular season a month ago the Thomasburg Toros turned the trick again, this time taking top spot in the Tweed Saturday Night Hockey League ‘A’ pool round-robin playoff.
Thomasburg finished the regular season a mere two points up on the second-place Tweed IGA Senators then wrapped up the round-robin portion of the post season Saturday, March 11, with a 3-3 tie against the Trudeau Park Rangers to close out the opening round of the playoffs a point ahead of IGA with an unbeaten 2-0-and-1 record.
After suffering a 6-2 pounding at the hands of the Toros last week IGA rebounded Saturday to double the Bush Furniture Panthers 6-3 and as a result will come out of the four-team ‘A’ round-robin in that all-important second slot sporting a 2-and-1 slate.
Thomasburg and the Senators will now advance straight to the semi-finals March 25 thanks to quarter-final byes while Trudeau Park (1-1-and-1) and Bush Furniture (0-and 3) will be forced to take on the Bogart Tweedsmuir Flyers and Rosebush Fuels Devils, respectively, in the quarters this coming Saturday.
Rosebush came out of the ‘B’ pool round-robin intact with a 2-and-0 mark to take first there and in the process put the brakes on the 9's Taxi Team’s season with an 8-3 shelling of the cabbies on the weekend. 9's Taxi finished last on the ‘B’ side going 0-and-2 to become the post season’s first casualty while the second-place Flyers finished up with a 1-and-1 record.
It’s all sudden-death from here, however, and beginning Saturday a loss means the end of your hockey season. The Bush-Rosebush quarter-final is set for 6:30 then at 7:30 Trudeau’s faces Bogart while the Toros and Sens enjoy the week off.
two from Tebo...
Thomasburg main-stay Barry Tebo fired home two goals late in the game to turn a 2-1 Toro deficit into a 3-2 lead but Trudeau Park’s Denis Francouer pulled the Rangers even just over a minute after Tebo’s second marker, giving each team a point in the standings.
Extra time was waved due to the fact that a one-goal win either way would have made no difference in the round-robin standings. Coming into the game Trudeau’s had to win by at least three goals to finish in the top two.
After Kirby Tebo gave Thomasburg a 1-0 lead early in the second period the Park Rangers’ Justin Cassidy squared things up late in the middle set, then when Chris Newlands scored for Trudeau’s early in the third period it appeared as though they just might be able to pull off the three-goal victory. Tebos’s two a half period later, however, quashed any hopes the Rangers had of stealing one of the quarter-final byes.
quick healers...
Tweed IGA looked completely healed from the previous week’s debacle against Thomasburg as the defending playoff champions bounced back to form with the big 6-3 triumph over Bush Furniture.
The Senators peppered goalie Rudy Capogreco with an almost constant barrage of shots in the opening period but the Panther netminder stood his ground, allowing just two goals to keep his team in the hunt early. But things fell apart quickly when IGA extended their lead to 4-0 with a pair of goals 37 seconds apart before the second period was five minutes old. The Panthers finally got on the board minutes later when they pounced back into the fray with two goals of their own in a span of just over a minute, but the Sens extended their lead to 6-2 by the mid point of the third period to put it way out of reach.
Leroy Gunter sparked the IGA attack with two goals, including the winner, and an equal number of assists with Andy Gunning, Brad Brooks, Jesse Cassidy and Shawn McNeil rounding out their scoring. Dave Baker, Mike Blackburn and Clint Gunter had the Bush goals.
perfect mark...
Rosebush Fuels comes into this week’s quarter-finals with the league’s only remaining flawless record at 2-and-0 but from here on out they’ll have to prove their worth against teams from the ‘top four’.
Teams taking part in this month’s ‘A’ pool round-robin finished first through fourth in the regular season and were playing the first round of the post season for the byes to the semi-finals while, on the other hand, the ‘B’ pool consisted of the three remaining clubs who wound up 5th, 6th and 7th and were fighting each other in an attempt to avoid being eliminated; a fate the ‘A’ teams haven’t had to worry about until now.
Following their first loss last week (6-4 to Bogart) the Taxi Team’s season came to an abrupt halt when they fell 8-3 to Rosebush Saturday. The Devils took charge early and controlled the play from start to finish, save for a quick spirt from the cabbies late in the second period when they momentarily erupted for a pair of markers just 42 seconds apart. Rosebush led 5-2 after the second period and 3-0 heading into the middle frame.
Shawn Lesage was the catalyst for the Devils, stealing the show with eight points on five goals and three assists to take over the scoring lead with 11 points, three more than regular season scoring champion Bill Marlin of Trudeau's. Lesage opened the scoring for Rosebush and closed it out with his team’s last two goals to power the Devils to one of their most impressive wins of the season.
Mike McKeown had two goals and two assists for the winners with Bill Ingram potting the eventual winning tally late in the second period. Chad Courneyea counted five assists for Rosebush with 9's Taxi answering back with a goal apiece from Corey Lessard, Tim Parker and Josh Calvert. |