Recorder & Times – Jonathon Brodie
Somebody’s zero had to go Friday at the Memorial Centre. Was it going to be the Hawkesbury Hawks perfect record to start the season or would it be Brockville Braves goalie Liam Souliere’s perfect record?
In the end it was the latter coming out on top as the Braves pulled out a 4-1 win over the Hawks to give Hawkesbury their first mark in the losing column this season.
“We like the energy, we like the group and that competitiveness will give us a chance to win,” said Braves coach Jesse Winchester. “Our guys care about winning more than anything, so it’s a positive culture. We know it’s not going to go our way every night, but they’re committed to doing things with purpose and slant the odds in our favour.”
Brockville looked strong for most of the first period Friday. For 19 minutes they held the league’s hottest team to just one shot on net even though they were down a man twice.
It was the final minute of the frame that buried Brockville when they picked up their third penalty and Hawkesbury’s Jeremy Cote took a shot at the side of the net, picked up his own rebound, and scored with 24 second left in the period.
With the way the Hawks have been playing to start this season you knew they were going to take flight sooner than later and in the second period they more than doubled their low shot count in just a few minutes.
The Braves have gone into a lull for an extended period of time the last few games and in each of those it was Souliere bailing them out. The sophomore goalie pulled his team out of the fire once again when the Hawks made their biggest push in the second period.
Brockville got over the hump when Fred Allaire tied the game eight minutes into the middle frame.
In the third period it was all Braves with three unanswered goals.
Brockville has been hot to open this season, but the one thing that wasn’t seeing much of surge to open the year was their power play. Brockville’s man-advantage went into Friday’s game scoring just two goals on 21 tries and they were going up against a penalty kill unit that has started out better than any team in the league, so it was probably a sigh of relief when Nicholas Hawkins scored on the man-advantage a little more than a minute into the third period.
Ten minutes later Mathieu Halle made a nice neutral zone feed to Eric Faith, who was rushing up the ice and then passed it to Philippe Gilmour waiting in the slot to one-time the puck home.
Hawkins added an empty netter in the closing minutes.
Brockville is rolling pretty nicely to start the season with five wins in six games, but if there’s something lacking it’s the amount of production they’re getting from their rookies.
Of the Braves 15 goals this season, only three goals have come off the sticks of the rookies. Despite Brockville having one of the best records in the league right now, they’re sitting eighth (out of 12) in the goals-for category.
The Braves veterans are getting the bulk of the ice time, but they’re still getting a disproportionate amount of the goals. What happens when Gilmour, Faith, Hawkins or Allaire go cold?
“Our offence is still a work in progress, but we got some guys that are playing some really good games and playing hard games,” said Winchester. “It’s only a matter of time before we start scoring more.”
The Braves host the Cornwall Colts next Friday at the Memorial Centre.
