Brantford 99ers

The Blades secured a huge win against the 99ers on the 23rd of February by a score of 4-3. A solid double-comeback effort that saw the team register 50 shots in what was a very needed confidence booster for this squad. The most notable performance of the evening was a huge night from Andrew Brown as he registered 3 assists in his 99th OJHL game. Goaltender Gavin McCarthy was also solid between the pipes, making 23 saves in the win.

The game got off to a bad start very quickly, with Brantford scoring at the 3:29 and 8:35 marks of the 1st period. Earlier in the season, this would have left the Oakville Blades stunned, and unable to recover, but this team has made great strides since then. The team fought back with 2 successive goals of their own at 9:18 and 10:04. Their hard work led to the goals by Churchill and Wang, resulting in the first of two comebacks in this game.

The Jack Churchill goal was a smart one, a goal you don’t see very often. As the point shot came in from McKenna, Churchill stopped the puck rather than deflecting it, and used his great size to reach around the goalie who had already fallen into the butterfly and score an easy goal!

It wouldn’t even be another minute before another big-bodied winger would score a goal when Matthew Wang decided to put his name on the scoresheet. After picking the puck up along the boards, he immediately cut towards the centre of the ice while fighting off the checking of two Brantford players. Once he got in between the circles he ripped it home for a fantastic goal. Creating dangerous offence like that is extremely projectable to higher levels of hockey and extremely impressive for a 17 year old!

Before the period would close out, the 99ers would register their 3rd goal of the night, taking the lead once again. Despite this, the Blades came into the 2nd ready to strike and they would do just that. 

Aidan Taylor would get us back even at 3:30 in the 2nd with a move very similar to that of Jack Churchill’s goal in the 1st. Making this a move we might see more of in the future. Wells was your next goal scorer, just walking it and beautifully placing the puck top shelf from the circle. That goal put Wells up to 3G, 6A in his last 4 games played, he’s on fire!

The game would continue to the end of 60 minutes with no extra scoring, giving us a 4-3 final where the Blades came out on top in what was Brantford’s last game of the 2022-2023 season. The 2 points will be extremely helpful in the Blades last ditch effort to make it into the playoffs. They have their work cut out for them as the Collingwood Blues are up next.

Collingwood Blues

The Blades took the bus ride up to Collingwood knowing that they were going to have a much harder time snatching the 2 points than the previous game against Brantford. Collingwood is one of the top teams in the league and had the advantage of being at home in this second game of a back-to-back for the Blades. The Blades opted to put Sam Edmands in net for this matchup and he performed exceptionally well making 46 saves against the high-powered Collingwood offence. 

Unfortunately for the rest of the team, they would only be able to slip one past the Blues goalie on the less than ideal 22 shots the team put on net. It would come in the 2nd period, after Collingwood had already managed to score 4 times and it came off the stick of Matthew Wang. He had positioned himself nicely in front of the net and Lachlan Wells fed him the puck from along the boards with a nice behind the back pass. The Blues would end up scoring again to close out that 2nd period and the game. 

5-1 was the final score from Collingwood as the Blades travelled back to the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex without the 2 points they had hoped to get going into the contest. The loss meant that the Blades slim hopes of a post-season appearance, were gone.

 On a positive note, Andrew Brown had crossed a huge OJHL milestone recording his 100th game! In those games, our co-captain has registered 12 goals and 40 assists! New member of the 100 game club, Andrew Brown and the rest of the Blades will show up to Pickering next for the last road game of the year on the 26th of February.

Pickering Panthers

The Blades collided with the Panthers for what surely was the most penalized game of the year for either team. In total, 100 PIM were picked up with 56 to Oakville and 44 to Pickering. Included in those minutes were 5 “Inciting an opponent” misconduct worth 10 minutes a piece! Rather unsurprisingly, 3 of the 4 goals scored in the game were on the man advantage and the other came on the penalty kill, making all of the night’s goal come from special teams. Sam Edmands got the nod once again in this matchup and was extremely solid backstopping the team with a .923 SV% on the night!

Oakville scored first in this matchup, but it would end up being the only goal they would score all game. It came 10:31 into the opening period and happened on the power play when the point shot from McKenna would find its way into the back of the net. After being jammed at by Jacob Crisp, it was eventually put into the net by Gleb Akimov for his 15th of the season! Akimov has registered 5G and 6A in his last 10 games and has shown constant improvement since the beginning of the season. It is nice to see him continue this productive pace in one of his last games of the year. 

Pickering would go on to score one goal a period, taking this one by a final score of 3-1 in their home arena. The team is surely bummed by the fact that they couldn’t get the win and now only have 2 games left on the regular season schedule, with no possibility of making the postseason.

However, the season isn’t over yet folks, there is still hockey to be played, and they’re both home games! Friday the 3rd of March we’ll host the Trenton Golden Hawks for our Billet Appreciation & Alumni Night with some pretty high profile alumni making their return to the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex! The following day on the 4th, we’ll be back at it again when we welcome the Wellington Dukes for our grad night. This will be the last game for our backbone and co-captain Jake Alcaraz, be sure to show up and give him the send-off we all know he deserves! In summary, two teams we haven’t faced yet this year and plenty of things to celebrate coming your way this weekend!

By Ty Brooks