Hunter Johnson earned his
1st star selection Thursday
night in the 5 - 3 win over
the Chatham Maroons after
turning away 65 of 68 shots
in the Great Ontario Jr. B
Hockey league game before
the home town fans.
"That was a great effort by
our guys tonight they had a
ton of shots," head coach
Dan Rose said "I
understand that mostly came
on the power play, our PK
did a great job tonight."
"Johnson kept us in there,"
Rose said about the
outstanding play by his
netminder. "That’s probably
the best I’ve seen him play
since he been here with the
number of shots that he had,
there was some point blank
shots but he was so focus
right from the start he
showed a lot of character."
Sarnia opened the scoring at
11:16 in the first with
Riley Babkirk scoring on the
power play with Cody Trowell
and Davis Boyer assisting.
At 14:09 Jay Clarke somehow
managed to put the puck in
through traffic in front of
the net. Defenceman PJ
Vandervaart playing up in
the forward position earned
an assist along with Jordan
Fogarty.
"PJ wants to be in the line
up," Rose said "We are
carrying eight D (defencemen)
right now and we were short
handed so he jumped up
front. He plays with energy
and their D definitely knows
he’s on the ice when he got
in on the fore check. He got
two good scoring chances and
his line scored a goal for
us and it was a big goal. He
had a partial breakaway. I
think the fans would have
went crazy if he had of
score. He brings a lot
of energy and he’s a good
kid. It’s hard to get him in
when we have eight D."
On a power play Steven
Szekesy blasted a shot from
the blue line that found the
opening scored the first
goal for the Maroons early
in the second period and
midway into the period Ryan
Vendramin scored a power
play that gave Sarnia a 3 -
1 lead heading into the
third. Cameron Clark
and Sam McCormack assisted
on the goal.
In the third period Davis
Boyer scored unassisted
after shooting the puck from
an impossible angle that
surprised Chatham's
netminder to put the
Legionnaires up 4 - 1.
At 13:20 Brennan Feasey
scored for Chatham to cut
the lead in half. At
17:31 the Legionnaires took
a penalty and in the
desperate attempt to score
Chatham pulled their goalie
for the two man advantage.
That attempt failed after
Davis Boyer scored into the
empty net. Still on
the power play and with the
net empty Chatham did score
with Feasey getting his
second goal of the game for
Chatham. After a
couple of missed empty net
attempts time ran out for
the Maroons and Sarnia took
the win.
Chatham outshot Sarnia
68-32. Both teams scored
twice on power play
opportunities, Chatham had
seven, Sarnia six.
The win gave Hunter Johnson
his 14th win of the season.
"It’s really big, I’ve been
struggling a lot in the last
couple of game and we
struggled last night. We
obviously didn’t have the
best game." Referring to the
7 - 2 loss in London on
Wednesday. "We just
knew we had to come back out
here because Chatham was
right behind us and we had
to get those two points and
stay in the race for first
place." Sarnia is now
20-8-0 for 40 points, 4
points behind Leamington
(22-5-0). Chatham is
in third with a record of
16-9-1 for 33 points.
The Legionnaires are back in
action next Thursday
December 11 when they host
St. Marys at 7:10 at the
Sarnia Arena. St.
Marys is sitting in the
bottom of the Western
Conference with a record of
2-22-2.