President's Update - January 7th, 2013

On Saturday evening the Avonlea Arrows, fresh off a victory over the Strasbourg Maroons Friday evening, won their fourth game in their last five games with a 4-3 shootout victory over the Bethune Bulldogs. The Arrows have now beaten the Bulldogs twice since losing to the Bulldogs in November. The Arrows tied the Bulldogs three times in this game before finally scoring the winner in the shootout. Jacob Ulmer scored late in the first period on the power play to give the Bulldogs a 1-0 lead going into the second period. Early in the second period Cal Filson scored for the Arrows to tie game up at one.  Joel Kot would put the Bulldogs up on a partial breakaway….shorthanded and then Calvin Watson would score on the power play with less than five minutes left in the second period to tie the game up once again. The Bulldogs would respond with less than two minutes left in second period as Lucas Ulmer would score shorthanded.  Gavin Mievre would score the third goal for the Arrows in the third period to push this game into overtime. Nothing was settled in overtime but the Arrows would score twice in the shootout on goals by Holland and Mievre….Mievre’s being the game winner. Justin Mrazek picked up the win in net for the Arrows while Ryan Seibel was in net for the Bulldogs. The Bulldogs had sixteen minor penalties while the Arrows had nine.

Also on Saturday evening, the Southey Marlins won their second game in a row with a 6-2 victory over the Lumsden Monarchs. Pat Thompson-Gale had a hat trick and an assist to lead the way for the Marlins. Also scoring for the Marlins were Brendan Jasper, Shay Wirll and Brandyn Wasyliw. Lumsden scoring came from Denby Haysom and Lance Morrison. Ryan Senft picked up the win in net for the Marlins and Jordan Wiest was in net for the Monarchs. Southey had five minor penalties and Lumsden had four. In Cupar, the second place Wynyard Monarchs were in town to play the Canucks and this game was all Cupar as the Canucks won 8-1. Kyle Ross led the way with two power play goals and two assists while Donovan Chow had two goals and an assist. Ross now leads the league with six power play goals. Also scoring for Cupar were Rylan Gebhart (PPG), Justin Schulhauser, Devin Stecyk and Eric Heisler. Wynyard’s lone goal came off the stick of Cody Straker. Jamie Wutke picked up the win in net for the Canucks while Jeremy Kwasny was in net for the Monarchs. Cupar had eight minor penalties, one major penalty, a misconduct and a game misconduct. Wynyard had eleven minor penalties, one major penalty, three misconducts and a game misconduct. Our fourth game of the evening was in Strasbourg where the Raymore Rockets started the game with six goals in the first period and cruised to an 11-4 victory over the Maroons.  Five Rockets scored twice in this game. Dallas Thiessen had two goals and three assists, Josh Belair had two goals and four assists, Shane Baum had two goals and two assists, Josh Jordan had two goals and two assists and Brett Kuglin had two goals (one PPG) and two assists. Byron Horvath picked up one goal and an assist for the Rockets.  Eric Schultz and Aaron Decorby scored power play goals for the Maroons. Greg Ferguson and Brendan Eisnor also scored for Strasbourg. Warren Niekamp picked up the win in net for the Rockets while Tyler Kifferling and Zack Gorril were in net for the Maroons. The Maroons had one minor penalty and the Rockets had four minor penalties.

On Friday evening, Brendan Jasper scored two minutes into overtime to give the Southey Marlins their first win since November 23^rd. The Rockets led this game going into the third period on goals from Josh Belair and Mike Nowosad. Pat Thompson-Gale scored Southey’s second period goal. The Marlins took the lead with two goals nine seconds apart with just over five minutes to go in the game. Shane Flaman scored on the power play to tie the game and then Evan Mohr scored to give the Marlins their first lead of the game. Josh Jordan would score with just over three minutes left in the game to send this game into overtime. Ryan Senft picked up the win in net for the Marlins while Warren Niekamp was in net for the Rockets. The Marlins had two minor penalties while the Rockets had five minor penalties and one misconduct. In Lumsden, the first Cupar Canucks played their first game since before Christmas and picked up exactly where they left off as they defeated the Monarchs 9-2.  The Canucks had period leads of 4-1, 5-2 and 9-2. Kyle Ross had three goals and an assist to lead the way for the Canucks. Shea Van Luven had two goals for the Canucks with the rest of the scoring coming from Justin Schulhauser with a power play goal, Brett Boha, Jaret Eberle and Kyle Ermel. Lumsden’s goals both came on the power play from Brett Matlock and from Jon Kress who scored his fourth goal in his last four games. Colby Miller picked up his third win of the year and is 3-0-0 with a 2.67 GAA to lead all goalies. Trevor Thiessen was in net for the Monarchs. The Canucks had seven minor penalties while the Monarchs had six. Also on Friday evening, the Avonlea Arrows defeated the Strasbourg Maroons 6-3. Shay Neufeld led the way for the Arrows with a hat trick. Gavin Mievre, Jared Molnar and Lonny Forrester (PPG) each had a goal and two assists. Tyson Orban, Greg Ferguson and Quinn McIntosh replied for the Maroons. Justin Mrazek faced 32 shots in the Avonlea net while Tyler Kifferling faced 22 Arrows shots. Each team picked up four minor penalties.

Brett Leffler from Wynyard with 15 goals and 15 assists and Kyle Ross from Cupar with 14 goals and 16 assists lead all scorers with 30 points each. The scoring race is tight with McAngus from Bethune with 27 points, Kauk from Wynyard with 26 points, L. Ulmer from Bethune with 25 points and McIntosh from Strasbourg with 24 points close behind. Injured Nathan Fischl from Raymore is second in GAA behind Miller with a 3.05 GAA while Jamie Wutke leads all goalies with 9 wins. Mrazek from the Arrows leads all goalies with 730 minutes played. The top power play in the league belongs to the Cupar Canucks at 29.0%. They are followed by Wynyard at 27.4% and by Strasbourg at 26.4%. The top penalty killing unit still belongs to Wynyard with an 85.3% success rate. They are followed by Avonlea at 80.8%, Bethune at 80.6% and by Cupar at 80.3%.

I encourage all of our statistic minded fans and of course our player alumni to check out our Archive pages to look at the past twenty five years of statistics. There are some very interesting numbers contained in these documents.

I will be sending tweets from two accounts on game nights and when there is HHL news to share…..as long as I keep getting updates….all of our recent tweets can be found at the bottom of our web pages.

http://twitter.com/GeraldTand from our new account http://twitter.com/highwayhockey

As mentioned at the start of the year, we will be renaming some of our trophies in 2013. I will have an announcement in regards to three of our trophies by this weekend.

Provincial schedules should be out next week and we will put a Provincial page together when that happens.

We have two weekday games this week. On Tuesday evening the third place Bethune Bulldogs (6-4-1) are in Cupar to play the first place Canucks (12-1-0). On Wednesday evening, the Strasbourg Maroons (6-4-1) who are tied with the Bulldogs for third place will be in Raymore for a rematch against the fifth place Rockets (5-5-1).

We’re in the third quarter of our schedule and we hope everyone has a chance to get out to see top notch senior hockey. Please get out to watch a game near you!

Gerry Tomkins

President - HHL