President's Update - January 8th, 2018

Bulldogs rebound....The Bethune Bulldogs defeated the Strasbourg Maroons 5-0 on Saturday evening. The Bulldogs lost to the Maroons in Strasbourg just before the Christmas break. Mike Reich scored on a power play in the first period to give the Bulldogs a 1-0 lead. In the second period Drew George and Coltyn Sanderson scored to make it 3-0. In the third period Sanderson would score again and Chris Merkel would score to make the final 5-0. Ryan Holfeld picked up the shut out in net for the Bulldogs stopping 29 shots. Rhett Freistadt was in the Strasbourg net and stopped 46 shots. The Maroons had three minor penalties and the Bulldogs had one. Huge win by Maroons...the Maroons were coming off a huge win in Lumsden Friday evening defeating the Monarchs 10-2. The Maroons led the game the entire way scoring three times in the first period, twice in the second period and five times in the third period. Mike Arnold led the way for the Maroons with four goals. Tanner Exner had one goal and four assists. Other goals came from Marselis Subban, Dylan Marcott, Garret Lockeridge, Sean Delwo and Tucker Slough. Lumsden scored twice in the first period on goals by Liam Brennan. Rhett Freistadt picked up his third win of the year in the Strasbourg net stopping 37 shots. Kurtis Sollosy and Will Hood both spent time in the Lumsden net and stopped 42 shots. Lumsden had five minor penalties and Strasbourg had four. Monarchs bounce back....On Saturday evening the Lumsden Monarchs came back from Friday's loss at home with a 7-5 victory over the Southey Marlins in Southey. Goals by Torey Lindsey, Brady Aulie and Kyle Johnson gave the Monarchs a 3-0 lead. Riley Mohr would score late in the first period to make it 3-1 going into the second period. Early in the second period the Monarchs would get a shorthanded goal from John Sonntag who was playing his first game with Lumsden. The Marlins would respond quickly with a power play goal from Chad Mazurak on the same penalty they gave up the shorthanded goal on. Just fifteen seconds later Ryley Storzuk would score and six minutes later a power play goal would tie the game at 4-4. Southey would score to make it 5-4 and then late in the period Kyle Johnson would get his second goal of the game on the power play late in the period and it was 5-5 going into the third period. Justin Nychuk would score on the power play just a minute into the third period and then Kyle Johnson would complete the hat trick with an empty net goal to make the final 7-5. Will Hood picked up the win in the Lumsden net and Ryan Senft was in net for the Marlins. The Marlins had four minor penalties and the Monarchs had three.

Rockets win in Raymore...On Friday evening the Raymore Rockets held off a late surge by the Southey Marlins and won 5-4 in Raymore. Cody Straker opened the scoring for the Marlins in this one and Raymore's Tyrell Shulko responded with two goals including a power play marker with nine seconds left in the first period to give the Rockets a 2-1 lead going into the second period. Travis Gerrard scored his first goal in his first game with the Marlins just twenty seconds into the second period and the game was tied. Goals by Josh Jordan and Drew Kochur gave the Rockets a 4-2 lead going into the third period. Mason Nedjelski would score for the Rockets with just over five minutes left in the third period to give the Rockets a 3 goal lead. Brendan Bentz and Travis Mohr would score one minute apart with just over a minute left in the game for the Marlins but the Rockets would hold on for the 5-4 victory. Riley Focht-Gabriel picked up the win in the Rocket's net and Ryan Senft was in net for the Marlins. Raymore had two minor penalties and Southey had two. Canucks win third in a row...On Saturday evening the Rockets would be in Cupar where the Canucks scored twice in the first period and twice in the second period and held on for a 4-3 victory over Raymore. Matthew Boha, Travis Orr and Godric Tham would scored for the Canucks. The winning goal was a shorthanded goal in the second period from Kyle Hall. Cody Mapes, Michael Jordan and Tyrell Shulko scored for the Rockets. Tanner Kehler piked up his fifth win of the year in net for the Canucks. Dean Brothen was in net for the Rockets. The Rockets had seven  penalties, one misconduct and a game misconduct. The Canucks had four minor penalties and a misconduct.

Moves since start of Christmas break....Raymore adds Reid Colley, Kyle Olyniuk, Jarod Boyes and drops Dayton Picard. Lumsden adds John Sonntag. Southey adds Travis Gerrard.

Kyle Johnson from the Lumsden Monarchs has a six point lead in the scoring race with 9 goals and 20 assists for 29 points. Johnson leads the league with 20 assists. Coltyn Sanderson from Bethune, Tyrell Shulko from Raymore, Torey Lindsey from Lumsden and Josh Jordan from Raymore all have 23 points. Sanderson leds the league with 14 goals. Sanderson and Shulko lead all scorers with five power play goals each. Kyle Hall from the Canucks leads all scorers with two shorthanded goals. Ryan Holfeld from the Bulldogs leads all goalies with a 2.60 GAA along with six wins and 485 minutes played. Tanner Kehler from the Canucks continues his fine play with a 3.13 GAA to go along with his five wins. Kurtis Sollosy from the Monarchs is third with a 3.58 GAA.

The Bethune Bulldogs lead all teams in the power play with a 32.4% success rate. The Lumsden Monarchs are next at 27.9% followed by Raymore at 25.5% and Cupar at 25.4%. The top penalty killing teams are the Lumsden Monarchs and the Raymore Rockets at 85.4%. Bethune is third at 80.6%. The Bethune Bulldogs are the only team that have not allowed a shorthanded goal and the Southey Marlins are the only team that have not scored a shorthanded goal. No team in the league is undefeated at home and the Bethune Bulldogs are the only team that have points in every game on the road with only an SO loss in Strasbourg,

On Wednesday evening the second place Bethune Bulldogs (8-1-1) are in Raymore to play the fourth place Rockets (5-8-0). On Friday evening the third place Cupar Canucks (7-4-1) are in Lumsden to play the first place Monarchs (9-3-0) at 8 p.m. Also on Friday evening Bethune is in Southey to play the Marlins (3-8-0) at 8:15 p.m. On Saturday evening Southey is in Strasbourg to play the Maroons (3-9-0). Also on Saturday evening Lumsden is in Cupar. Both games start at 8 p.m.

Thanks for coming out to our games this past week, we appreciate it. To keep up to date please follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/HighwayHockey All of our tweets, which include updates from all games, appear on the front page of our web page. Also we are doing a bit of experimenting with live updates. We are only doing some of the games right now but I will give you the link on Twitter on game nights and you will be able to click that link either from your phone or right off of our front page under the Twitter listings.

Thank you for supporting the Highway Hockey League.

Gerry Tomkins

President