After a busy start to December which saw the boys on the ice 18 times in 23 days leading up to the Christmas break the boys closed off the month by playing in the Zurich Peewee Tournament.
Game 1 saw the boys taking on host Zurich in pool A round robin play on Thursday morning. Zurich opened the scoring just over two minutes into the first period and held the advantage in the opening frame in shots 6-3 and face offs 5-2. Mitchell would not give up and were rewarded when Quaid Austin jammed home a lose puck on a power play goal assisted by Brett DeJong and Steven Bird with 18 seconds remaining to end the period 1-1 giving each team a ½ point for the first period.
The second period saw the teams equal in shots with 3 but Zurich would win the full point as a result of a controversial power play goal that was awarded even though Mitchell net minder Aaron McNeil held the puck out before the play was whistled dead.
Mitchell would press hard in the final period controlling the play leading in shots 8-3 and face offs 6-1 but would give up one more goal and suffer a 3-1 loss. Zurich would come away with 4.5 points to Mitchell’s 0.5.
Game 2 that afternoon was against Plattsville Oilers, a team Mitchell had not seen this year. Mitchell came out in the first period ready to send a message and made it very clear by lighting up the goal-light 4 times in a two minute span before the first period was four minutes old. Goals scored by DeJong, Tyler Smith, Jack O’Rourke & Andrew Feltz. Mitchell would control the first period play with a 9-3 edge in shots and 10-3 in face offs.
Mitchell won the second period by a single goal scored by Curtis Lockhart giving the boys two full points for winning both periods. Shots were 8-3 and face offs 4-5.
In the final frame the boys added to their lead with goals from Kurtis Eisler, DeJong and Smith to lead 8-0. A defensive face off loss deep in the Mitchell end was enough for Plattsville to capitalize on and ruin the shutout bid by Tanner Knechtel with only 4 seconds left on the clock to make it 8-1.
Assists went to Austin with 3 and singles to Nic Baker, Smith, Jamie Adair, Lockhart, Riley Sykes, Jacob Laing, DeJong, and Luke O’Rourke.
Mitchell would win all 5 points for the game and held a total of 5.5 after the two game round robin in Pool A. That total was good enough to advance to the B Championship game on Friday versus Petrolia.
Mitchell dominated the stats in the championship game leading Petrolia in shots 25-10 and winning every face off to go a perfect 21-0. Petrolia stayed tough keeping the most important number on the scoreboard at zero sending the game to sudden death overtime when regulation ended deadlocked at 0-0.
At the 3:31 mark of OT the line of Eisler, Lockhart and Sykes ‘got their noses dirty’ in front of the Petrolia net and were able to somehow get the puck over the line to give the team the B Championship trophy with a hard fought 1-0 win with the shutout going to McNeil.
A great way to end December and the perfect way to head into playoffs!
Job well done boys!
Superb effort by everyone!