President's Update - December 5th, 2016

There were two games in the Highway Hockey league on Friday evening. In Avonlea, the visiting Strasbourg Maroons were down early 1-0 but scored three goals in the first period and twice in the second period and held on to defeat the Arrows 5-4. The maroons got scoring from Tayler Balog and Tyson Orban and also scored three power play goals. Tanner Exner, Sean Delwo and Greg Ferguson with the game winning goal all scored on the power play. The Arrows scoring came from Mike Miller, Brett Kealey, James Dombowsky and Devin Cobbold. Tyler Kifferling picked up the win in net for the Arrows and Jesse Gooding was in net for the Arrows. The Maroons had six minor penalties and the Arrows had four plus a major penalty. Mark Jelinski received a one game suspension for an instigator penalty. Also on Friday evening the first place Bethune Bulldogs were in Raymore to play the Rockets. The Rockets scored four times in the first period and had a 4-3 lead going into the second period. Penalty trouble allowed the Bulldogs to score one power play goal in the second period and two goals in the third period and pull out a 6-4 victory. Mike Reich, Drew George and Lucas Ulmer scored for the Bulldogs in the first period. Joel Kot, Mike Reich and Jacob Ulmer scored power play goals for the Bulldogs. Josh Jordan scored twice for the Rockets including a power play goal and Bradyn Melrose and Michael Jordan also scored for the Rockets. Ryan Holfeld picked up the win in net for the Bulldogs and David Perkin was in net for the Rockets. The Rockets had fourteen minor penalties and the Bulldogs had seven.

On Saturday evening the Bethune Bulldogs played host to the Avonlea Arrows and defeated them 11-2. Bethune’s scoring was led by Kyle Ross with four goals including a power play goal. Drew George scored three times and he also scored on the power play. Lucas Ulmer scored twice and Jacob Ulmer and Russ Nielson also scored for the Bulldogs. Ryan Seibel, on his birthday, faced 31 shots from the Arrows. Kyle Oleniuk and Josh Jelinski on the power play scored for the Arrows. Dean Brothen was in net for the Arrows and faced 46 shots. Bethune had four minor penalties and Avonlea had three. Also on Saturday evening the Lumsden Monarchs defeated the Strasbourg Maroons 5-3 for the second time this year. Kyle Johnson scored twice for the Monarchs. Liam Brennan, Dale Spelchen and Jesse Matlock also scored for the Monarchs. Sean Delwo scored twice for the Maroons and Tyson Orban also scored. Matt Weninger stopped 21 of 24 shots fired his way for the win in net and Jeremy Ellis stopped 35 of 40 shots in the Maroon’s net. Each team had two minor penalties. Congratulations to the Cupar Canucks who defeated the Wynyard Monarchs on Saturday evening 4-3 and picked up their first win of the season. Brayden Frank scored three times, including two power play goals and the game winner while Colby Miller was in net and picked up the win.

Drew George from the Bethune Bulldogs leads the scoring race with 10 goals and 13 assists. Teammates Kyle Ross and Jacob Ulmer are just behind with 22 points each. Bethune leads the Team Goaltending stats with seven wins and a 3.00 GAA. Lumsden is next with five wins and a 3.50 GAA and Raymore follows with a 4.75 GAA. Adam Jordan from Wynyard leads all goalies with 340 minutes played; Ryan Holfeld from the Bulldogs leads all goalies with 5 wins and a 2.43 GAA.
Power Plays are doing very well this year and of course, penalty killing hasn’t been quite as effective. Bethune leads all teams with a 40.5% success rate and they are followed by three teams all tied at 33.3%...Strasbourg, Wynyard and Cupar. Bethune has the top penalty killing unit with an 84.4% success rate. Lumsden is next at 80.8% and they are followed by Strasbourg at 73.5%.

One game on Wednesday evening as Bethune (7-0-0) is in Raymore (2-2-0). On Friday evening The Lumsden Monarchs (5-1-0) host the Wynyard Monarchs (2-4-0), the Cupar Canucks (1-6-0) are in Raymore to play the Rockets and Strasbourg (3-4-1) are in Avonlea (2-4-0) for an 8:30 p.m. game. On Saturday evening Wynyard is in Bethune, Cupar is at Lumsden and Raymore will be in Strasbourg.

You can follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/HighwayHockey All of our tweets, which include updates from all games, appear on the front page just under the Upcoming Games column if you just want to follow us on the website during games. You can also follow my account the Pensky File http://twitter.com/GeraldT

Thank you for supporting the Highway Hockey League and please get out to a game near you.

Gerry