By: Daniel Vazzoler
The Carleton Place Canadians ended a three-game losing streak on Sunday in a convincing fashion as they beat the Rockland Nationals 6-1.
A quick start of four goals in the first 10:47 helped the Canadians avenge Friday’s 2-1 loss against Rockland on the road and chased Nationals goalie Joe Giacobbo out of the net after he had a 26-save game in the first half of the home-and-home weekend.
“We won a lot of one-on-one battles and we had the puck a little bit more (on Sunday) but we also hit the net,” Canadians coach Jason Clarke said. “I think we were less than 45 per cent hitting the net Friday night, (Sunday) we actually shot the puck and we shot with a purpose. We got a lot of stuff on net and generated a lot of chances so it was good. It was a much better effort than Friday night.”
Perhaps Friday was a case of a tired Carleton Place team after a hard week of practice that caused the loss because the Canadians looked like a different team on Sunday
Peyton Francis got the action started early Sunday afternoon as he scored 1:41 into the first period. Friday wasn’t a good game for any Canadian, but it was especially not fun for Francis as he had to briefly leave that game after being on the receiving end of a hard hit that clearly didn’t have an effect on him on Sunday.
But Francis was quick to brush it off and praise his team-mates for helping him bounce back and get the goal.
“It was a good goal, it was just a really good play by my defenceman (Eastan Eckert) to get me the puck out in the middle,” he said. “Their ‘D’ played the 2-on-1 pretty good, he took away the pass, so I knew I had to shoot. I just went on the far side.”
Henry Enebak added a pair of goals a little more than three minutes apart before Andrej Hromic ended Giacobbo’s game and gave the Canadians a 4-0 lead, scoring on four of the team’s first nine shots of the game.
William Collins scored the lone Rockland goal in the game after the Hromic goal in what ended up to be a light workload for Connor Murphy – facing just 11 shots in the win – and Jackson Sterrett responded to it, capping off an exquisite passing play in the attacking zone.
Keenan Reynolds wrapped up the scoring on Sunday as he tallied his first goal of the season.
“It was an orangutan (on my back) at this point, missed a few empty nets, feels really good to get it off my back,” he said. “But it was a great play by my line-mates, Sterrett and Hromic, and hopefully it’s the first of many this year.”
Carleton Place has a few days of practice before getting back into game action, playing back-to-back road games in Kanata to face the Lasers on Thursday before travelling to face the Smiths Falls Bears on Friday night.
And it’s those practices where Francis said the team can find the way to make Sunday’s game the norm for Carleton Place.
“We’ve got to be on each other in practice and we’ve got to have good internal competition throughout the week. When we’re pushing each other and we’re working hard in practice, it shows in the game because when you’re working hard all week, then it’s a lot easier to play in the game.”
“We can let off the gas as a staff either in practice in how we practice and our practice habits,” added Clarke. “We’ve just got to continue to work hard and take it from there.”
