The Collingwood Blues kicked off the OJHL season over the weekend at The Eddie Bush Memorial Arena taking on the Pickering Panthers. The Blues were in action both Friday and Saturday night.

On Friday with the excitement of a new season in the air and the pregame festivities amping the crowd of over 500 and change in attendance. The Blues were slow to get out of the gate spotting Pickering a four-goal lead. The Blues were not out for the night however as they were able to erase the deficit and take the game to overtime. Despite the comeback effort, it was not meant to be for the home team as a costly turnover in overtime sent Pickering home with the bonus point. Jake Kovacs, Cole Hipkin & Will Reddick each contributed 2 points each in the losing effort. Ayden Dooley supplied the heroics sending the game to OT with a seeing-eye point shot. After a first period that Noah Pak will surely want to
forget, settled down to give the boys a chance at the comeback.

Saturday evening the Blues again couldn’t get out of old habits. The Blues were unable to get the first goal of the game again but did manage to get out of the first period only down one. It was not for the lack of chances as the Blues were able to outshoot Pickering with over 40 shots on goal and over 75 shots on goal between the two games. Pickering goalie Justin Easter was just dialled in after giving up 5 goals on 35 shots on Friday night. The Blues countered with Sam Moncada who was good when needed but was unable to stop the offence. Pickering was relentless around the net when left alone on blown man coverage with one goal being completely picked out of mid-air at the side of the net unopposed. Although the Blues
dropped 3 of 4 points to Pickering. It will be a long season in the OJHL North Division with no less than 6 games remaining against the Panthers including 4 matchups on the road in Pickering.

Coach Rob Bentivegna "After a year away from meaningful hockey, it was great to
see regular-season hockey at the Eddie Bush. Friday's game didn't start the way we wanted it to, but our staff was proud of the response from the boys. It would have been easy for them to fold and look ahead to Saturday's game, but they showed a lot of resilience to come back and force overtime and secure a point. The atmosphere in the arena was great, and it was amazing to see the fans and community support behind us. Saturday's game was much tighter in the score, but we ran into a hot goaltender and a few mental lapses ended up in the back of our net. It takes a lot of energy to come back as we did on Friday and I think our guys ran out of gas by the end of the weekend. We now have some specific areas to improve during our practices this week to make sure we are ready for Aurora on Friday night"

The Blues return to action on October 8 vs Aurora Tigers. Game time 630pm. Just a reminder of Live Music in The Founders Lounge entertainment will be provided pregame, intermission and post-game. All fans are welcome after the game.