President's Update December 18th, 2018

On behalf of the entire league we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year....Only two games this week with Bethune in Strasbourg on Tuesday evening and Cupar in Raymore on Friday evening. Both games start at 8 p.m. We are back in action beginning Friday, January 5th, 2018. Update from Tuesday evening...Strasbourg halts Bethune win streak….The Strasbourg Maroons defeated the Bethune Bulldogs 4-3 on Tuesday evening picking up their second win of the year. Both wins for the Maroons have happened via the shootout. This was the first loss for the Bulldogs since their first game of the year against Raymore. The Bulldogs scored the first goal of the game thanks to Mike Reich. Sean Delwo would score late in the period and the game was tied going into the second period. Bryce Hubick would score early in the second period and the Maroons were on top 2-1. Late in the period Coltyn Sanderson would score on the power play and the game was again tied. In the third period Strasbourg would regain the lead on a goal from Mark Cross seven minutes into the third period. Joel Kot would score on the power play with just 34 seconds left in the period. Overtime produced no goals and new Maroon Marselis Subban would be credited with the winning goal in the shootout. Rhett Freistadt picks up the win for the Maroons in net and Ryan Holfeld picks up a point in the Bulldog net. Strasbourg had four minor penalties and Bethune had three.Canucks win big on the road...On Sunday evening the Cupar Canucks defeated the Strasbourg Maroons 6 -2 in Strasbourg and moved to 5-4-1 on the year, solidly in third place. The Canucks led throughout with Travis Orr and Cody Hall scoring on the power play. Orr would complete the hat trick with two more goals. Brayden Frank and Landon Fahlman had the other goals for the Canucks. Mark Cross and Jory Miller scored for the Maroons. Tanner Kehler picked up the win in net for the Canucks and Tyler Kifferling was in net for the Maroons. The Canucks had one minor penalty and the Maroons had two minor penalties, two misconducts and a game misconduct. The Canucks were coming off a 6-5 loss to the second place Bethune Bulldogs on Saturday evening at home. In this game Mike Reich and Carter smith scored to give the Bulldogs a 2-0 lead and Brayden Frank would score towards the end of the period to make it 2-1 Bulldogs going into the second period. Godric Tham would score early in the second period and the game was tied. Joel Kot would answer for the Bulldogs very quickly to get back the one goal lead. Brayden Frank would then score his second goal on the power play to get the game tied again. Late in the period the Bulldogs would score two goals in eight seconds with Matt Delahey scoring on the power play and then Coltyn Sanderson scoring and it was 5-3 for the Bulldogs going into the third period. Early in the third period Mike Recih would score his second goal to make it 6-3. Tyler Wilyman would then score twice for the Canucks and the final score was 6-5. Ryan Seibel got the win in the Bethune net stopping 32 shots. Colby Miller took the loss in the Cupar net. Miller and Tanner Kehler stopped 35 shots. Each team had two minor penalties and a major with a game misconduct. This was the Bulldogs seventh straight win. On Friday evening the Bulldogs were in Lumsden to play the first play Monarchs. A late goal from Drew George would prove to be the winner in a 6-5 victory. The Bulldogs four times in the first period and led 4-1 going into the second period. The second period belonged to the Monarchs who came back with three goals and the game was tied 4-4 going into the third period. With about eight minutes left in the third period the Monarchs got a goal from HHL scoring leader Kyle Johnson and had their first lead of the game. The Bulldogs responded four minutes later as Coltyn Sanderson scored his fourth goal of the game and then George would score the winner with just under two minutes left in the game. As mentioned, Coltyn Sanderson scored four times in this game for the Bulldogs, including twice on the power play. Drew George scored the other two goals for Bethune. Besides the Johnson goal, the Monarchs got two goals from Justin Nychuk and goals from Liam Brennan and Torey Lindsey. Ryan Holfeld picked up the win in net for the Bulldogs stopping 37 shots. Will Hood started in net for the Monarchs and Kurtis Sollosy finished the game and they stopped 35 shots. The Monarchs were coming off a 7-1 win over the Raymore Rockets at home Tuesday evening. Captain Brady Aulie had two goals and three assists to lead the way for the Monarchs. Kyle Johnson, Liam Brennan, Torey Lindsey, James Beattie and Aaron DeCorby scored the other goals for Lumsden. Tanner Linford scored his first HHL goal for the Rockets. Kurtis Sollosy picked up his third win of the year in the Lumsden net stopping 26 shots. Dean Brothen had a busy night in the Raymore net facing 44 shots.

There were two other games this past weekend. The Raymore Rockets defeated the Southey Marlins 8-6 on Friday evening in Raymore. The Rockets were up 4-2 after one period and 4-3 after two periods. The Marlins would tie the game early in the third period but the Rockets would score twice to take the lead for good. The Marlins would get within one before the Rockets would score an empty net goal to make the final 8-6. Josh Jordan led the way for the Rockets with two goals and four assists. Tyrell Shulko, Michael Jordan, Cody Mapes, Tristan Third, Todd MacMurchy with the game winning goal and Kyle Schmalenberg with a power play goal also scored for the Rockets. Taylor Wilton, Derek Halldorson, Riley Probst, Rickey Siedel, Travis Mohr and Ryley Storzuk scored for the Marlins. Riley Focht-Gabriel picked up the win in net for the Rockets. Ryan Senft was in net for the Marlins. Each team had four minor penalties. The Southey Marlins picked up their third win of the year with a 4-2 victory over the Strasbourg Maroons on Saturday evening in Southey. Evan Mohr scored twice for the Marlins including the game winner to lead the way. Travis Mohr and Chad Mazurak also scored for Southey. Greg Ferguson and Tyson Orban scored for Strasbourg. Ryan Senft picked up the win in net for the Marlins and Dallin Sorenson was in net for the Maroons. Southey had four minor penalties and Strasbourg had two.

Notes from the past week….Raymore Rockets add Todd MacMurchy…..Southey Marlins release Joey VanDusen….Strasbourg Maroons add Marselis Subban….Raymore Rocket Louie Howatt suspended one game for taking game misconduct in last ten minutes of game….Lumsden Monarch Christopher Whitteron suspend one game for taking game misconduct in last ten minutes of game…

Kyle Johnson from Lumsden continues to lead the HHL scoring race with six goals and seventeen assists for 23 points. Brayden Frank from the Cupar Canucks is second with 21 points. Coltyn Sanderson from Bethune is third with 20 points and Torey Lindsey from Lumsden, Kyle Hall from Cupar and Carter Smith from Bethune are tied for fourth with 19 points each. Coltyn Sanderson and Tyrell Shulko from Raymore lead all scorers with four power play goals each. Drew George from Bethune, Tyler Penny from Lumsden and Coltyn Sanderson from Bethune lead all scorers with two game winning goals each. Brayden Frank from Cupar, Derek Fuchs from Bethune, Torey Lindsey from Lumsden and Cody Hall from Cupar lead all scoring the first goal of game twice each. Kurtis Sollosy from Lumsden leads all goalies with a 2.88 GAA. Ryan Holfeld from Bethune is next at 3.00 and Tanner Kehler from Cupar is third at 3.36 GAA.  Ryan Holfeld from the Bulldogs and Will Hood from the Monarchs lead all goalies with five wins each. Dean Brothen from the Rockets leads all goalies with 348.8 minutes played. The Bethune Bulldogs lead Team Goaltending with an overall 3.38 GAA and the Lumsden Monarchs are next at 3.80.

The Bethune Bulldogs continue to lead the league in power play with a 30% success rate. The Lumsden Monarchs are next at 27.8% followed by Raymore at 27.3% and Cupar at 26.5%. The top penalty killing unit belongs to the Lumsden Monarchs at 87.8%. They are followed by the Raymore Rockets at 86.2% and the Cupar Canucks at 79.1%. The Raymore Rockets are the least penalized team in the league averaging 10.3 minutes per game. The most penalized team are the Southey Marlins who average 22 minutes per game.

Thanks for coming out to our games this 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.

Everyone have a great holiday and we will see you at the rink in 2018. Thank you for supporting the Highway Hockey League.

Gerry Tomkins

President