CALEDONIA – The Caledonia Pro-Fit Corvairs want the Sutherland Cup and will demolish anyone who gets in the way. The unfortunate Pelham Panthers drew the Corvairs in the first round of the Jr. B playoffs with predictable results.
Saturday night, in Caledonia, the Corvairs also showed no mercy on their way to an 18-0 romp in Game #2 of the series. The Corvairs blew aside the Panthers 7-1 in Game #1 played in Pelham. The slaughter continued in Game #2, at the Haldimand Centre with a 6-0 walk, but Game #3 was down right ridiculous.
In the second of back-to-back home games, the Corvairs ran up an 18-0 victory that felt like a midget team playing the Montreal Canadians. It was that lop-sided. Shots on goal tell the story. Shots on goal tallied 71 for Caledonia against 15 shots by Pelham.
“Some people might accuse us of running up the score, but the league made a new rule regarding the Sutherland Cup where goals for and goals against could be a factor should playoff wins/losses be tied,” explained general manager Brian Rizzetto. “It wasn’t that “Bully” (coach Mike Bullard) was pushing the guys or double shifting guys. The way I look at it, they knew that we were not going to hold anything back. They could have tried to put together a better team.”
In Game #3, the Corvairs rested three of their better players in Todd Ratchford, one of the best defensemen in the league, Connor Patten a 45 point man in the regular season and Connor Bramwell, a 46 point man.
“It’s a dangerous time of the year and we are predators,” says Rizzetto. “We smelled blood and did what we do. You can’t ask your guys to ease up at this time of year.”
Nearly everyone on the game roster for the night got at least one point, but Kyle Tanev led the way and accounted for 7 points by way of 2 goals and 5 assist.
It was 7-0 after 20 minutes, 15-0 after two periods.
The pain may have ended for the Panthers Tuesday night in Game #4, played in Pelham, however, the results missed our deadline.
In the first 3 games of the first round, the Corvairs amassed (31) goals for and allowed 1 goal against.