President's Update - January 26th, 2015

Maroons hold on to first place with two victories on weekend….A busy week for the Strasbourg Maroons saw them split games with the Balcarres Broncs in their first round Provincial series and win both games in league play. The Maroons played four games in five nights. On Tuesday evening they lost at home to the Balcarres Broncs 11-3 and then on Thursday evening they evened the series with five unanswered goals in the third period to defeat Balcarres 7-4 in Balcarres. They will play the deciding game on Thursday evening in Balcarres. On Friday they defeated the Lumsden Monarchs 5-2 and then on Saturday evening defeated the Cupar Canucks 6-3 at home to solidify their hold of first place.

In Lumsden Greg Ferguson and Jory Miller scored the first two goals of the game and Brady Aulie would score late in the period to give the Maroons a 2-1 lead heading to the second period. Quinn McIntosh would restore the two goal lead for the Maroons late in the second period. Brady Heintz would then score a Maroon power play goal and it was 4-1 heading to the third period. Heintz would score his second goal of the game shorthanded late in the third period. This is the Maroon’s first shorthanded goal of the year and the fifth given up by the Monarchs this year. Austin Preete would then score on the power play and the final would be 5-2 for the Maroons. Tyler Kifferling stopped 30 of 32 shots directed his way for his fourth win of the year. Will Hood was in net for the Monarchs and stopped 31 shots. Each team received three minor penalties.  On Saturday evening in Strasbourg Tanner Exner opened the scoring on the power play and in the last minute of the period Chad Filteau got the Canucks on the board. In the second period Kurtis Decker gave the lead back to the Maroons and later on Connor Frank would score to get the game back on even terms. Just thirty seconds later Exner would score his second goal of the evening and the Maroons were up 3-2 but a minute after that goal Filteau would score again and the game was tied going into the third period. Quinn McIntosh would score to give the Maroons the lead and then late in the period the Canucks gave up two power play goals as Brady Heintz and Evan Meyers would score to make the final 6-3. Tyler Kifferling won his second game of the weekend in net stopping 24 of 27 shots sent his way. Tanner Kehler stopped 29 shots in net for the Canucks. The Maroons did not take a penalty in this game and the Canucks ended up with four minor penalties, two of them late in the game, and one misconduct.

The Wynyard Monarchs have moved back into second place with a pair of victories this past weekend. They defeated the Cupar Canucks 5-3 in Cupar and the Bethune Bulldogs in Wynyard 10-3 on Saturday evening. They have now won nine of their past ten games. In Cupar Friday evening, Riley Storzuk scored on the power play for the Monarchs and Landon Kallichuk scored for the Canucks in the first period. Donovan Chow gave the Canucks the lead but the Monarchs scored twice within a 26 second span in the last minutes of the second period. Eric Popadynec scored a shorthanded goal and then Brett Leffler scored 26 seconds later to give the Monarchs a 3-2 lead going into the third period. Donovan Chow would get his second goal of the evening to get the Canucks back to even. Unfortunately for the Canucks the last two minutes of the period saw Jody MacDonald and Justin Zadoroozniak score and the Monarchs left with a 5-3 victory. Dave Perkin picked up the win in net for the Monarchs and Colby Miller was in net for the Canucks. The Monarchs were assessed four minor penalties and the Canucks had just one minor penalty. On Saturday evening the Monarchs defeated the Bethune Bulldogs 10-3. Tyler Shewchuk, Justin Zadoroozniak, Donovan Hall and Riley Storzuk scored on the power play and Brett Leffler scored shorthanded. Cody Straker, Joey MacDonald, Justin Zadoroozniak, Donovan Hall with his second goal of the game and Brett Leffler with his second goal of the evening scored even strength goals. Jacob Ulmer, Lucas Ulmer and Derek Fuchs scored for Bethune. The Monarchs had four minor penalties and the Bulldogs had eleven minor penalties and two misconducts. David Perkin picked up his eleventh win of the season in net for the Monarchs and Ryan Seibel was in net for the Bulldogs.

The Raymore Rockets played once on the weekend and defeated the Avonlea Arrows at home 4-2 and maintained third place tied with Bethune. Tyrell Shulko opened the scoring for the Rockets and Calvin Watson would score late in the period and the game was tied going into the second period. Early in the second period James Dombowsky scored to give the Arrows a 2-1 lead. Josh Jordan would score midway through the period and the game was tied 2-2 going into the third period. In the third, Raymore would score twice. Michael Jordan would score both goals and the final would be 4-2 for the Rockets. Kevin Orthner was in net for the Rockets and Kelley Lueck was in net for the Arrows. The Arrows had five minor penalties and a misconduct and the Rockets had two minor penalties.

The Arrows hosted the Lumsden Monarchs on Saturday evening. Brady Aulie opened the scoring for the Monarchs and Austin Preete would then score and the Monarchs would have a 2-0 lead before Josh Jelinski would score on the power play for the Arrows. Before the period was done Denby Haysom would score and Ryan Herman would score on the power play and the Monarchs led 4-1 going into the second period. Ryan Herman would pick up his second goal of the game late in the period and James Dombowsky would score for the Arrows just eleven seconds later and it was 5-2 going into the third period. There was no scoring in the final frame. Will Hood picked up the win in net for the Monarchs and Kelley Lueck was in net for the Arrows. The Monarchs had seven minor penalties and a misconduct. The Arrows had eight minor penalties and a misconduct.

One week left in the season…the team finishing first gets a bye into the semi-finals. Strasbourg will finish first place if they win their last two games of the season. Avonlea Arrows will play the second place team in the first round. Lumsden and Cupar will play either the third or fourth place teams.  On Tuesday evening the Cupar Canucks (5-9-2) will host the Avonlea Arrows (0-14-1) and the Wynyard Monarchs (11-5-0) will be in Lumsden to play the Monarchs (6-11-0). On Wednesday evening the Bethune Bulldogs (10-3-1) host the Strasbourg Maroons (13-3-0). Friday evening the Bulldogs will be in Avonlea and on Saturday evening the Raymore Rockets (10-5-1) will be in Strasbourg and the Bethune Bulldogs will be in Cupar in a rescheduled game from the first weekend in January. The final two regular season games will be played the following week….Wynyard @ Bethune and Raymore @ Cupar.

In Provincial ‘A’ action the Strasbourg Maroons play the third game of their series with Balcarres in Balcarres on Thursday evening at 8:00 p.m. On Friday evening the Raymore Rockets will be in Davidson for game two of their series at 8:30 p.m. On Saturday evening, the Wynyard Monarchs fresh off a 5-1 victory over Bruno in game one of their series will be in Bruno for game two of their series. In Provincial ‘C’ the Lumsden Monarchs host Eatonia on Saturday, February 7th. In Provincial ‘D’ the Avonlea Arrows host the Central Butte Flyers on Sunday, February 8th. Full HHL Provincial results are available by clicking here.

Michael Jordan from the Rockets leads the scoring race with 15 goals and 21 assists for 36 points. Brett Leffler from Wynyard is next with 15 goals and 21 assists for 34 points. Chad Filteau from the Canucks is third with 30 points. Bulldog’s Kyle Ross with 29 points and Mike Reich with 28 points round out the top five in the race for the Tyson Sievert Scoring Trophy. Donovan Hall from the Wynyard Monarchs leads all scorers with six power play goals. Brady Heintz from the Maroons is next with five. Brett Leffler from Wynyard leads all scorers with three shorthanded goals. Greg Ferguson from the Maroons and Donovan Hall from the Wynyard Monarchs lead all scorers with four game winning goals each. Ryan Senft from the Bulldogs leads all goalies with a 2.00 GAA. He is 7-0-0 on the season. Jeremy Ellis from the Maroons is next with a 2.67 GAA and a record of 8-1-0. David Perkin from Wynyard leads all goalies with 11 wins and time played with 960 minutes. He is third with a 3.06 GAA.  The top power play unit in the league belongs to the Wynyard Monarchs at a success rate of 32.1%. Strasbourg is second at 27.4% and Bethune is next at 24.1%. The top penalty killing unit belongs to the Raymore Rockets at 84.7% Bethune is next at 81.3% and Strasbourg is third at 81.0%.

Please note that the Highway Hockey twitter feed is now on our main page for your convenience….so you don’t have to be on twitter to get the updates from our league. The Highway Hockey feed will show all tweets sent from our feed. You will get our new “mobile view” on your handhelds….there is an option at the bottom of the page to go to a desktop view. If you prefer you can just follow us: http://twitter.com/highwayhockeyor on the Pensky File http://twitter.com/GeraldT

Thank you for supporting the Highway Hockey League. There are more Provincial games this week and our regular season is coming to a close which means playoffs will start soon…it is a good time of the year for senior hockey…please get out to a game near you.

Gerry Tomkins

President - HHL