HAGERSVILLE – The Jr. C Hagersville Hawks closed out 2016 on Fri. Dec. 30 at the Dunnville Memorial Arena with a 4-3 OT win.
The score did not represent the ebbs and flows of the game as the Hawks outshot the Dunnville Mudcats 43-23, but had a hard time beating Cats’ goalie Jesse Schoeman who stopped 39 Hagersville shots.
There was certainly no Christmas cheer exchanged between the two teams, especially in the second period where referee Alton Stead blew 16 penalties, many of the nasty kind, including four inciting an opponent misconducts, two to each side. All in all, Hagersville served 30 minutes on seven infractions and Dunnville took 50 minutes in 13 infractions.
Mudcats’ Josh Meeuwse opened the scoring halfway through the first period, and then took a 2-0 lead early in the second frame with Tanner Vallee scoring for Dunnville.
Hagersville got into the game at 3:33 of the second as Matt Weston found room past Schoeman from Zach Car and Matt Killip. The Hawks chipped another goal off the Dunnville lead on a Ralph Taggart powerplay goal scored from Carr.
Jacob De Maeyer restored the Dunnville lead at 16:18 to sent the teams into the second intermission with Dunnville leading 3-2. Both teams settle down after a wild second period, and Taggart scored his second of the game on a Caledonia powerplay with four minutes remaining in regulation time to force an OT decision.
Carr scored the game winner at 4:50 of the OT period from Taggart for the win.
The Hawks enter 2017 in fourth place in the Bloomfield Conference, 15-13-1, seven points behind Port Dover. Glanbrook is in second place with 40 points and the Grimsby Peach Kings still control the top spot with 59 points.
Thursday, January 5, the Hawks will be in Dundas and Saturday, January 7, Niagara is in Hagersville for a 7:30 p.m. start, followed by a Sunday afternooner at 2 p.m. in Port Dover.
