Aurora Tigers

A busy week of hockey sees its first taste of weekend action when the visiting Tigers made the voyage from Aurora. The two teams had already met once at the Governor’s showcase in Cobourg where Aidan Taylor had scored the OT winner in a fantastic game. Likely due to this, Taylor made an appearance on the team’s top line to try and recreate some of the success he found last time. The Aurora team wasn’t completely the same though, they had recently completed a trade with Oakville that saw goaltender Claudio Ardellini head to the Tigers to fill the role of being their backup goaltender. 

Regrettably, the game did not fall in favour of Oakville this time. The crowd of over 200 were left without a goal from their home team after 60 minutes of play and the Aurora Tigers would eventually take this game by a score of 5-0. It certainly wasn’t the best effort the team has given, and surely the coaches and players are well aware of how they played and know to make adjustments for the next game against Markham. Full boxscore here: http://oakvilleblades_ojhl.wttstats.pointstreak.com/boxscore.html?gameid=3602986

The highlight of this one was the many donations provided by you and the team for the Gift of Giving Back.  This a nonprofit organization that has been providing food for those in need for the past 17 years. It is the largest community food drive of its kind in Canada. The Gift of Giving Back’s mission is to inspire, support, educate and empower our children to compassionately give back to the community they live in by collecting donated food for the network of beneficiaries in the Halton Region. Thank you for all of your amazing generosity! 

Markham Royals

The Oakville Blades entered the night looking to flip the script from their previous night's loss. The season series between Oakville and their opponent for the evening, Markham, sits at 1-1 with the most recent game being a 5-4 OT win at Sixteen Mile. The pre-game ceremonies leading up to the game saw a new addition tonight with a new hype video being played on the video board. The fans and players seemed like they quite enjoyed it as the team lined up on the bench before skating onto the ice to admire some of the great goals they had scored and hits they had made throughout the season as part of the video, along with the historical clips. Once the game had started, it proved to be an overall entertaining game that saw much improvement in their play from the previous night at the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex.

The first period saw plenty of action on both sides. Plenty of great chances were created by forwards like Akimov and Churchill as well as the defencemen Brown and Costante. Although we love to see the Blades win, the next best thing is to watch an action packed back-and-forth game where both teams get chances and the skaters as well as goalies get to shine. Fortunately for the fans, this is what we got to see throughout the first period and it made it a very entertaining one. Unfortunately for the Blades, they wouldn’t score in this period and the Royals ended up sneaking one by with only 5 minutes left to go in the period.

The next 20 minutes was hugely dominated by the Blades. The team did a great job of getting shots in from the point and getting great chances off the rebound. When they weren’t doing that, they had their wingers working the cycle down low and charging towards the net to create in-tight chances. It paid off right away, only 2 minutes in, Brown put himself back in the goal column after a few games of not being able to find the twine but was it ever in great fashion. He ripped one straight by the goalie’s glove on the powerplay and brought the score back to even. The home squad did a great job of keeping McCarthy’s job easy in this period as sometimes the best defence is more offence. 1-1 after 40 minutes. 

Markham immediately scored to open the 3rd period. It was not even 30 seconds in. The early surge appeared to be indicating to us what would happen in this period. It would certainly reign true for shots and chances but the Blades showed a great amount of tenacity and drive to claw themselves back into the game. After fighting for another 10 minutes, they found themselves in the Royal’s zone. Brown picked the puck off the boards and threw it at the net. When you get the puck on the net, good things happen and they sure did for Brown as he scored his second of the night by beating the goalie low. After the goal, everybody could tell that the game was going to be a close finish. 

What happened next was truly spectacular. The team’s leading goal and points scorer hit his 10th goal of the season in stunning fashion. A simple breakout from Churchill saw Wang receive the pass at his own blue line and now it was on. Wang is known to use his great speed in combination while his big frame to power past defenders and the threat of him doing that seems to loom in the back of the minds of the players he goes against. This time he went a different route. It can only be described as the shot of the game, week, month and the season so far for the Blades. He flew in after the breakout and rushed the puck himself in the other zone and released an unbelievably precise shot that screamed right past the goalie’s glove and rang the post and went in. Oakville went up 3-2 thanks to this magnificent shot and McCarthy slammed the door shut for the next 4 minutes so that the team could walk away with a huge win. An overall well played game for the Blades really paid off with a nice win. Full boxscore here:http://oakvilleblades_ojhl.wttstats.pointstreak.com/boxscore.html?gameid=3602555

The next game Oakville plays is the 3rd of a 4 game home stand which takes place against the Milton Menace on Tuesday the 22nd. A rare Tuesday night at home.

By Ty Brooks