Starting the tournament on fire!

The mighty East York Bulldogs pulled into Weston for the Last Gasp tournament and decided to blow away one of our key rivals.

Leaside had a score to settle against the Bulldogs, after we knocked them out of the playoffs with an upset victory. But our team wouldn’t let that happen.

Down 2-0 early, the fans were a little concerned, but just 13 seconds after giving up the second goal, Max brought the Bulldogs back to within one by going to his favourite spot – top shelf, over the goalie’s glove, with an assist from Cam on that play.

A quick line change and out came Carter – playing at centre for the first time this year – and he and Ibrahim combined to tie the score after Gabriel did a really nice job moving the puck up to our forwards.

Max added two more to finish his hat trick before the end of the first period, and the Bulldogs had scored four unanswered goals. Cade, Carter and Emanuele picked up assists on the last two goals.

In the second period, Leaside popped one in behind Michael, making the start in goal for us on the afternoon, but in a goalmouth scramble, Andrew W. lifted the puck past the Flames goalie to restore the two goal lead. Emanuele and Carter had assists on that goal, too.

In the third, Max scored his fourth, while Carter added his second allowing the coaches to finally relax. We moved Jonathan and Nate to centre and had some fun. Leaside narrowed the score to 7-5, but the finish was never in doubt.

One reason there was little doubt was the goaltending of Michael. He made a couple of brilliant pad saves and a toe save to prevent Leaside from clawing back into the game. Overall, he stood strong and made the saves we needed to win. A great game.

It was good to see a number of new names on the scoresheet with assists today, like Cade and Gabriel and Ibrahim and William. It was also nice to see Emanuele skate beautifully and add a couple of assists and Carter play his normal, forceful game, on top of the two goals and two assists.

On defence, a number of key stops plus an excellent job of keeping  the puck in at the blueline really led us to victory. Nice job by the two Andrews, Gabriel, Cam and William.

The tournament awarded Max the MVP of the game award, and a hat trick award, but everyone contributed to the victory.

Next game is Friday night against Streetsville.