Rockets in 3-way tie for first after falling to Cougars; team trades Ethan Gallant
Bytown Royals visit Chesterville this Saturday
The Rockets’ Launch Pad
by Rob Sadler
North Dundas Rockets General Manager
The Rockets played host to the Vankleek Hill Cougars this past Saturday night, suffering a 5-to-2 defeat and falling into a three-way tie for first place with the Gatineau Hull Volants and the Papineauville Vikings.
The Cougars, who were coming off a win the previous night against Metcalfe, came out to play hard. The scoring was opened in the first period at 12:24 by Marc-Antoine Doyon (Riley Sauve, Nikolas Ayotte) and then again at 9:59 by Jonathan Leblanc (Tyler Druce) giving the Cougars an early 2-to-0 lead. The Rockets split the lead in the dying seconds of the first on a shot by Connor Roth (Bryden van Kessel, Jack van Kessel). Tyler Dopelhammer (Sauve) put the Cougars up 3 to 1 going into the third where Riley Sauve and Marc-Antoine Doyon would put the finishing touches on the game in the final 20 minutes. Roth scored again for North Dundas at the 2-minute mark, but it was too little too late, the final being a 5-to-2 loss, the Rockets first loss at home this season.
As General Manager of the organization, all I can comment on is that we got beat by a team that played well. We actually started the game in control and failed to capitalize on the chances we had early in the first period. When you keep good teams in hockey games, they will generally make you pay for it, and that’s what Vankleek Hill did Saturday night. We got away from some of things we’ve been doing over the past 5-game winning streak, hopefully it’s a week long set back, and we continue to push forward against Bytown next week. Our shifts need to shorten up, especially on the power play and on defence, currently the club is actively looking to add to it’s defence core as a means of adding some depth, and perhaps pushing a couple guys we currently have to get on board with the program that Nik Paas and Lenard Mclean are running.
We would also like to announce that the club made a trade last week, sending Ethan Gallant and the NCJHL playing rights of Hawks Captain Dillon Clemen to the Blackburn Hamlet Inferno in exchange for the NCJHL playing rights of Nicholas Seguin, formerly of the Gloucester Rangers Junior A team, and currently playing for the 1st place South Ottawa Canadians in the CCHL. We acquired Ethan from Ottawa West earlier this year, and would like to wish him all the best in his development moving forward.
This weekend coming we host the Bytown Royals in Chesterville, puck drops at 7:30 p.m. We would also like to invite all those able to attend a game on Saturday nights — kids 12 and under are free admission, students are $5 and Adults are $8. Come cheer on the 14 local kids we have in the lineup.
