By: Daniel Vazzoler
The Carleton Place Canadians will get to enjoy their break following a 4-1 win on Friday against the Smiths Falls Bears.
“It’s a well-deserved four days off, we’ve played more games than any other team in the league and we always take the U.S. Thanksgiving long week-end off,” Canadians coach Jason Clarke explained.
Players may have been looking ahead to heading home early in the game as Marc Shannon took advantage of a Canadians turnover in the Carleton Place zone. Shannon took the puck in the slot and his shot beat Michael Leach with a quick shot placed high on the glove side.
The goal appeared to snap them back into focus as it didn’t take long for them to focus back in on the task ahead of them. Although, the players said they tried to keep thinking about the break until after the game.
“Coach talked about it, guys talked about it, we didn’t want to think about (the break) too much,” Canadians assistant captain Sam Knoblauch said. “Maybe, naturally, it was in the guys’ heads a little bit but it was just important to stay focused and we earned these four days off. One last good game and head into the break on a good note.”
Carleton Place didn’t let the goal affect it as it responded quickly to the goal with a power play goal less than a minute after falling behind. Aidan Girduckis put himself at the far post to tip in the seeing-eye pass from Knoblauch to get the goal.
Girduckis added his second point of the net, getting an assist by springing Haydn Hopkins and Shawn Kennedy on an odd-man rush. Hopkins passed off to Kennedy and his wrist shot wired past Bradley Dobson, tucked just under the cross-bar on Bradley Dobson’s blocker side, for Kennedy’s first goal since returning to the Canadians.
“It was just luck to be honest,” Girduckis said of his multi-point effort. “Good opportunities on the power play, boys were helping me out there, getting me good passes and making good plays. They were able to finish them too.”
The Carleton Place power play has been a sore spot over its recent run of success but, even though the man advantage only scored one goal, it looked better against Smiths Falls and generated a number of quality chances.
“Smiths Falls played us really tight when they were on the penalty kill the last time we were here and we had to make a few adjustments,” Clarke said. “We got some really good looks tonight, probably deserved a few more power play goals, but Dobson, I thought, played really well. It was good to see the guys make the adjustments.”
“I kind of rolled up extra high and then went down the wall, just the way (Smiths Falls) was playing it and we got a couple of nice plays from it,” added Knoblauch. “The goal-line play was open and Girduckis was open as well and he got a nice goal from it.”
After a scoreless second period, Knoblauch added some much-needed insurance early in the third period. Justin Cmunt spotted Knoblauch in behind the defence and sprung him on the breakaway. Knoblauch didn’t waste the opportunity as he beat Dobson high with the wrist shot.
Connor Hill capped off the scoring with an empty net goal to help the Canadians head into the break.
The team hopes the two wins this week will help them maintain the #1 ranking Carleton Place received on Monday when the CJHL released its most recent Top 20 list – something Clarke said might have played into his team’s performances on Friday and in Wednesday’s 1-0 win against the Nepean Raiders.
“Sometimes when you read your own press clippings, it might get to your head a little bit and I think that happened to us, especially on the Wednesday night,” he said. “But, another thing this team does is continue to stick with it and battle. It wasn’t our prettiest game on Wednesday but we stuck with it, and, again today, I thought Smiths Falls played really hard and forced us to play the game the right way and I like how we responded.”
The Canadians are out of game action until Dec. 1 when they will take on the Brockville Braves on the road before they head home on Dec. 3 to play against the Bears for the first time at the Carleton Place Arena.
