Mooretown, ON – It was Junior C hockey's battle of Lambton County, as the Mooretown Flags and Alvinston Flyers looked towards first place in the North Division.

 

But despite an early 2-0 lead, the Flyers would give up four straight goals to the Flags as Mooretown takes a three point lead on Alvinston for first place in the North Division with a 5-4 victory.

 

Chad VanEyk opened the scoring 2:36 into the first period, followed by Cody Curts picked up the second goal of the game after a Mooretown turn over lead to Joe Archer picking up the loose puck and finding Curts in the slot for the goal.

 

But in the second half of the first period Mooretown would get back into the game, first with a goal by Kurtis Glowa, who picked up a loose puck in between the defensemen's legs and brought it in for a breakaway goal. Josh Teschke would follow it up with just over a minute left in the period with a powerplay goal, putting it off the goalies back and into the net from behind the goal line to make it a 2-2 hockey game after two periods.

 

With an evenly matched second period, Mooretown would grab their first lead of the game, as Michael Gray picked up the puck behind the net and found Jeff Schroeter in front for the goal and the 3-2 Mooretown lead.

In the third, the teams would exchange goals, as Schroeter would get his second of the game, picking up a deflected pass and getting around the goalie for a wide open net, giving Mooretown a two goal lead.

 

 VanEyk would add his second of the game 33 seconds later to cut the lead to one, after getting two chances in front at the puck before putting it passed Andrew Ganter. But two minutes later McGregor Haddon would restore the two goal lead with a wrist from the slot the caught the top corner.

 

But after a giveaway behind the net, Alvinston would again cut the lead down to one, as Chris Edwards would find Dan Warner to make it a 5-4 hockey game.

 

Despite a pulled goalie and many scoring chances, Alvinston could not find the extra goal to send the game into overtime, and Mooretown would walk away with the two points.

 

"It was a lot closer then we needed to make it," said head coach Bruce Aberhart. "That's the thing about Alvinston, they got lots of offensive fire power too and if you let them hang around in a game they're going to come back and make it as exciting as it was in the end."

 

Andrew Ganter picked up his fifth win of the season making 21 saves. This snaps a three game losing streak Ganter had, with his last win coming against Alvinston back on October 6th. James Morreau made 23 saves in the loss.

 

"We were not at our best tonight and that was plainly obvious from the get go we were slow starting," said Aberhart. "We still need to take care of business in our own end. We were really loose, Andrew came up with a couple of big saves late in the game to keep it a one goal game for us. We just can't keep putting ourselves in those positions anymore."

 

Mooretown finishes off their week with their third game in three nights, heading to Kingsville Sunday afternoon. Alvinston will take on Wheatley Monday.