CALEDONIA ‑ The Caledonia Pro-Fit Corvairs left a message for the 2nd place St. Catharines Falcons as the Greater Ontario Jr. B Hockey League looks forward to the Christmas break. Traditionally, the Christmas Break is considered the halfway point in the hockey season when rosters become more solid and players get a second wind heading down the home stretch towards the playoffs.
The only team in their division that could take a crack at the first place Corvairs at this point is the Falcons who are 11 points behind, in second.
This past weekend the two division leaders went nose to nose in a home and home series with Caledonia coming up with a 1–0 double OT win in St. Catharines followed by a 9–2 crushing of the Falcons Saturday night in Caledonia.
It appears the Falcons left it all on the Ice in Friday night’s marathon game and had nothing left in the tank for Saturday night at the Haldimand Centre.
Joel Horodziejczyk and Marc Sinclair put on a clinic Friday night each in St. Catharines, standing perfect for four periods. Horodziejczyk even handled a penalty shot late in the third period awarded to Caledonia’s Daniel Volpe to send the teams into overtime.
Both penalty-killing special teams were forced to deal with several shorthanded situations as the Corvairs powerplay went 0–6 and the Falcons went 0–8 in odd man opportunities.
It ended at 1:36 of the fifth period when Johnathon Schaefer finally found a hole in Horodziejczyk’s armor. Matthew Hore and goalie Sinclair set Schaefer up on the play.
Back in Caledonia the next night, there was never any doubt as the Corvairs handed the Falcons a 9–2 pounding accented by Matthew Hore’s natural hat-trick in the middle part of the second frame.
Jake Brown, who scored three on the night, and Matt McCartney gave the Corvairs a 2–0 first period lead. Jamie Bennett recorded the first St. Catharines goal at 54 seconds of the second. But that wasn’t even a speed bump for the surging Corvairs as they answered with the next six goals to complete the second period with Caledonia well ahead at 8–1. Besides Hore’s three, Austin Brown, Jake Brown and Quentin Maksimovich scored.
With the hockey game well out of reach for the Falcons, the game got very rough in the third. There were no fights as it were, however some very rough and maybe even dirty play.
Jake Brown notched Caledonia’s ninth goal on a powerplay at 4:13 while St. Kitts’ Broderick Kelly scored on a powerplay two minutes later.
Caledonia outshot St. Catharines 61–20 in the lop-sided win.
The Corvairs were also in action Tuesday night in Pelham in a game that missed our deadline, however, with the Panthers season record of only one win against 24 losses and 4 OT losses, there is not much doubt how that game ended up.
Saturday, December 19th, the Corvairs get another shot at the Falcons at the Haldimand County Caledonia Centre at 7:30 before the Christmas break.
Photo by David Laforce.
