Feb 24, 2019 | GeoffRead | 583 views
Hawks Have Excellent Showing In Orillia Tournament
The West London Hawks Minor Bantam #27 had an excellent tournament in Orillia on Family Day weekend going 3-1 and qualifying for the finals despite playing against teams featuring a mixture of kids born in 2004 and 2005, whereas the Hawks are a team of entirely 2005 kids. Unfortunately, however, they ran into a very strong team from Bradford in the final and dropped the championship match 4-2.
The keys to the Hawks' success in the round robin were multiple. There was balanced scoring from two forward lines as everyone contributed. There was strong backchecking by the forwards and sound positional play by the defence. And there was the solid goaltending of Zach Read in net that gave his team the confidence to play well in front of him.
The line-up was constant throughout the tournament. Unfortunately, right-winger Brendan Walsh missed the competition with a knee injury. In his absence, Coach Liam Walsh decided to go with two lines and three sets of defencemen. This meant that Nathan Senese dropped back and played defence with mostly excellent results. He combined with Noah Weber for a speedy if somewhat lightweight pairing, while Jacob Grover and Liam Stewart provided a little more beef on a second pair, and the eclectic mix of the brawny Jack Churney and sinewy Piper Baker were put together for the third pairing. Up front, the shifty Callum Knapp centred Cole Chick to his right and Matt DiCicco to his left: and in the four games the trio combined for four goals, producing at exactly a goal a game clip. The second line saw Owen Worby between right-winger #9 and left-winger Matt Hodgins. This unit proved particularly explosive putting up 14 goals - production that was evenly distributed as the trio put up 5, 5, and 4 goals respectively.
In the first three games, the results of this lineup were excellent. The Hawks used a relentless forecheck and solid D and positional play to wear their opponents down, taking over all three games about midway through and piling on the offence as the games wore on. Accordingly, the posted victories of 4-1, 6-2, and 6-2 over two teams from Orillia and another from Newmarket.
But in the final the Hawks ran into a very strong team from Bradford. They really had no weaknesses and were particularly adept at cycling the puck down low. This caused the Hawks' defence fits and generated at least two of the Bradford team's four goals off defensive breakdowns that resulted when the Hawks got running around in their own end. The Hawks staged a very late comeback posting two late goals to close the gap to 4-2 but it was too little too late. Truthfully, Bradford was clearly the better team in the game and was full marks for the win.
Still, the Hawks could take pride in their weekend's work. They had no only played with the big boys but bested most of them. When the Hawks play their best game they are a force to reckon with.
Go Hawks go!