Baseball       Flag Football       Football       Inline Hockey       Hockey      3 on 3 Hockey       OHL       Lacrosse       School Sports       Soccer       Ultimate Frisbee       More Sports

Legionnaires break streak and clinch playoff spot
dan mccaffery January 13th, 2011


The Sarnia Legionnaires broke out of their losing streak in dramatic fashion last night, edging the first place London Nationals 5-4 in a shootout.

Ilya Arkalov got the winner when he deked the netminder out of position and poked in a one-handed shot to clinch the victory.

For Aralov, it was his third shootout winner of the campgain. In all, he has a dozen goals, although the shootout markers don't count in his totals.

Going into the game, the Legion crew was on a three game losing skid that had dropped it into sixth place in the nine-team Western Ontario Hockey Conference.

Playoff spot clinched

With the two points the Legionnaires officially secured a playoff spot. In the 62-year-history of junior hockey in the city, no Sarnia Jr. 'B' club has ever missed the post season.

The Legionnaires did miss the playoffs in 1969 and 1970 and the old Sarnia Bees did the same thing in 1972, but all three of those were Tier II Jr. 'A' squads.

Sarnia's Jr. 'B' teams are 60-0 when it comes to qualifying for the money games.

Scoreless first period

Both teams played hard from the opening faceoff to the final whistle. And it showed on the scoreboard.

In fact, neither team could score in the first frame, although Sarnia had an edge in play.

Brent Sauve opened the scoring with his 10th of the season early in the second stanza.

With the Legionnaires on the powerplay, Sauve took a pass from Jesse Drydak and fired a wrist shot into the top right corner.

Josh Teschke, playing just his third game after being called up from the Jr. 'C' Mooretown Flags, made it 2-0 a few minutes later with a nifty redirect from the side of the cage.

The opportunistic Nationals scored late in the second period, then squared matters early in the third.

From there on in it was a back-and-forth struggle that had the crowd of more than 1,400 on the edge of their seats.

Sarnia regained the lead at 8:42 of the third when rookie Jeff Schroeter notched his fourth of the year with a rising slapshot from the sideboards.

The Nats tied it again, only to see Brett Thompson score from close range to give the Legionnaires a 4-3 edge with less than four minutes left. But the visitors deadlock matters yet again.

Tanner Tomlinson appeared to score the winner with less than two minutes to go with a blazing drive that either hit the post or went in-and-out in a flash.

The goal judge turned on the red light, then blinked it again after the officials allowed the game to continue.

After overtime solved nothing, the teams went to a shootout.

Sarnia goalie Kyle Washer turned back all three London snipers to pave the way for Arkalov's spectacular play.

Game notes:

·         Sarnia assists were collected by Drydak, Waldie, Schroeter, Jeff Paulley and Andy Sokol.

·         After the game, Legionnaires coach Dan Rose had words of praise for big new defenceman Connor MacIvor, saying, “He did fine. He moved the puck hard. For his first game, I was very happy with his play.”

·         Captain Tyler Cicchini missed the game with an upper body injury but is expected to be back next week. Defenceman Tanner Ferguson is out with a broken collar bone.

·         Washer, who made 33 saves, now has a 15-5-1 record. He is 2-0 against the Nats. The Legionnaires had a whopping 59 shots on net.

·         Sarnia is now the only team in the league that has a winning record against the Nats, having posted a 2-0-1 mark against them in three meetings.
 




 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                          © 1999 - 2010 Sarniasports.com - All rights reserved                                                   About Us       Contact       Jobs