President's Update - January 30th, 2018

Monarchs with HUGE win....The Lumsden Monarchs defeated the Bethune Bulldogs 9-7 on Friday evening in Lumsden....what is huge about this? This is the first win by the Lumsden Monarchs over the Bethune Bulldogs since January 20th, 2012 or 6 years and 6 days since the last victory. The game was very interesting and enjoyable. Braeden Adamyk and then John Sonntag with a power play goal gave the Monarchs a 2-0 lead after one period....and then came the second period. The Bulldogs would score four times in the first 14 minutes of the period on goals from Derek Fuchs, Carson Sinclair, Drew George and Mike Reich. The Bulldogs were back in control. With four minutes left in the period Torey Lindsey would score on a breakaway to get the Monarchs within one. Forget one goal...the Monarchs would get goals from Brady Aulie and Kyle Johnson in the next 43 seconds and they were back in the lead 5-4 going into the third period. Torey Lindsey would score on the power play early in the third period to give the Monarchs a two goal lead. Cue Drew George....he would complete the hat trick with goals to tie the game 6-6. Fourteen seconds after that goal Braeden Adamyk would score his second goal of the game to give the Monarchs a 7-6 lead. With just over five minutes left in the game John Sonntag would score his second goal of the game to give the Monarchs an 8-6 lead. Game over...right? Nope, cue Drew George as he would score on the power play with three minutes left and get the Bulldogs within a goal. The Bulldogs could not get the game tied and the Monarchs would get an empty net goal from Andrew Perrault to make the final 9-7 and end a very long drought...strange that Groundhog Day is around this time...Curtis Koskie stopped 30 shots to record his first HHL victory in net. Ryan Holfeld stopped 40 shots in the Bethune net. Southey with HUGE win.....Also on Friday evening the Southey Marlins hosted the Strasbourg Maroons in another exciting game. These two teams are going to settle the fifth and sixth spots for the playoffs. Two power play goals off the stick of Greg Ferguson gave the Maroons a 2-0 lead after one period. Early in the second period Dylan Mohr would get the Marlins on the board. Halfway through the period Sean Delwo would score a shorthanded goal to give the Maroons a 3-1 lead. With just under five minutes left in the period Travis Mohr would score a power play goal and the Maroons led 3-2 going into the third period. Early in the third period Drew Wilde would tie the game with a goal. Then with seven minutes left Cody Straker would score to give the Marlins their first lead of the game. Mike Arnold would then score on the power play to tie the game 4-4. Note that all four Strasbourg goals came from special teams. Overtime did not produce a goal but Ryley Storzuk would score the shootout winner for the Marlins to make the final 5-4. We have had four shootouts this year and the Maroons have been in all four games. Landen Moldenhauer picked up the win in net for the Marlins and Rhett Freistadt was in the Maroons net.

Canucks with HUGE win...yes huge is my word for the weekend and I won't use it again...now if I could just convince every sports announcer and "pro" player of any sport to stop saying "unbelieveable" when they actually mean that something is hard to believe then I would be happy....get a Thesaurus..Back to the Canucks...The Cupar Canucks defeated the Southey Marlins 11-4 Saturday evening in Cupar and that put them in first place for the first time in a long time. In the last three years we have seen this team grow as a group and it has to be satisfying to climb this high in the standings. Cody Hall led the way with four goals and an assist. Travis Orr and Brayden Frank each scored twice. One of Frank's goals was on the power play. Kyle Hall, Godric Tham and Donovan Chow with a power play goal also scored for the Marlins. Riley Probst, Drew Wilde, Brett Mohr and Dylan Mohr scored for the Marlins. Tanner Kehler picked up the win in net for the Canucks and Landen Moldenhauer was in the Southey net. Southey had two penalties, both of which came in the third period and the Canucks did not receive a penalty in the game. Rockets defeat Bulldogs for second time this year...Two goals from Josh Jordan and Tyrell Shulko and a power play goal from Tyler Bell propelled the Rockets to a 5-2 victory over the Bethune Bulldogs in Raymore on Saturday evening. Drew George and Russ Neilson scored for the Bulldogs. The Bulldogs had five penalties and the Rockets had four. Dean Brothen stopped 29 shots in the Raymore net to pick up the win and congratulations to Midget 'AA' goalie Riley Christison who played his first HHL game awith the Bulldogs and also stopped 29 shots. I am sure we will see more of Riley in our league in the future.

Bounce Back Maroons...On Sunday evening the Strasbourg Maroons bounced back from their loss in Southey with a 7-4 victory over the first place Cupar Canucks. Yes I would say there is a bit of parity in the league this year. The Maroons led this game from start to finish. Greg Ferguson led the way for the Maroons with two goals include a power play marker. Sean Delwo with a shorthanded goal, Tanner Exner, Marselis Subban, Tye Exner and Mike Arnold with a power play goal also scored for Strasbourg. Travis Orr scored twice for the Canucks and one of those goals came shorthanded. Cody Hall and Godric Tham also scored for the Canucks. Dallin Sorenson picked up the win in net for the Maroons stopping 28 shots. Tanner Kehler was on a six game win streak for the Canucks in net and stopped 28 shots in this game. Cupar went from no penalties on Saturday evening to ten minors in this game. Strasbourg had eight minor penalties.

One week of hockey left and then we start playoffs. Going into this final week Kyle Johnson from the Monarchs continues to lead the scoring race with 37 points with one game left to play. Kyle Hall from Cupar is next with 35 points and he is followed by Josh Jordan from Raymore with 33 points. Brayden Frank from Cupar and Torey Lindsey from Lumsden are tied for fourth with 32 points. Tyrell Shulko from the Rockets and Greg Ferguson from Strasbourg lead all scorers with six power play goals each. Shulko and Mike Reich from the Bulldogs lead all scorers with three game winning goalies. Ryan Holfeld from the Bulldogs continues to lead all goalies with a 2.90 GAA along with eight wins and a shut out. Tanner Kehler from Cupar is next with a 3.52 GAA and eight wins. With team statistics we have four teams within 2.4% of each other on the power play. The leaders are Bethune (26.9%), Lumsden (26.7%), Raymore (25.4%) and Cupar at 24.3%. The top penalty kill unit belongs to the Raymore Rockets who have an 88% success rate. They are followed by the Lumsden Monarchs at 85.7% and the Bethune Bulldogs at 80.9%.

Thanks for coming out to our games this week, we appreciate it. Provincials and playoffs start next weekend. 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. You can also follow me on the Pensky File on Twitter. 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. Just go to mcarton.ca/hhl  and select Highway Hockey League and look to see if there is a live game.