By: Daniel Vazzoler
The Carleton Place Canadians started off the 2018-19 season on a strong foot by sweeping the Labour Day showcase, but looked like a completely different team on Friday in a 3-2 shoot-out loss to the Brockville Braves.
“We were not very good,” Canadians coach Jason Clarke said. “A lot of guys think they’re better than they are, there’s no doubt about that, and it showed [Friday]. A lot of guys weren’t ready, weren’t prepared.”
Past Carleton Place teams have prided themselves on being tough to play against, something Clarke said he didn’t see against the Braves.
“Brockville beat half of our team in one-on-one battles all night long.”
The game started promisingly for the Canadians with a Jackson Sterrett power play goal in the first four minutes of the game. They carried the momentum the rest of the opening period, but couldn’t have it last into the middle period.
“We came out pretty strong, but we didn’t have 20 guys in the game. Some guys took the night off and the end result shows,” Carleton Place captain Cade Townend said.
Friday was another strong performance from Canadians goalie Connor Murphy as he made 37 saves on 39 shots, including a number of highlight worthy saves to – at the time – keep Carleton Place ahead 1-0 before Brockville got goals from Fred Allaire and Emerick Nadeau to get the lead going to the third period.
Clarke claimed his goaltender’s performance was what kept the score lower than he said he felt Brockville deserved. He was also adamant in saying he felt his team thinks the showcase weekend pumped up their ego a little too much.
“We go 3-0 in the opening weekend and win two games 6-1, I think our team thinks they’re a lot better than what they are. It was a good old-fashioned whooping, the score wasn’t indicative of the play and, if it wasn’t for Murphy it could have been a lot worse,” he added.
It was a struggle for the Canadians to get going again in the third period, but David Gagnon did beat Liam Souliere to tie the game late in the third period and send the game to over-time.
The extra five minutes solved nothing and the shoot-out was required to determine a winner. Philippe Gilmour and Sterrett traded goals in the first round of shooters, and Eric Faith gave the Braves the lead in the second round.
After Souliere stopped Andrej Hromic in the second round, Murphy stopped Mathieu Halle to keep the Canadians alive. Ryland Mosley, the shoot-out hero for the bronze-medal winning CCHL team at the Sirius Junior Club World Cup, had the chance to level the score but couldn’t beat Souliere.
The Canadians’ next game is their home opener on Sunday and they will be facing the lone undefeated team left in the CCHL, the Hawkesbury Hawks, where they’ll look to bounce back as use the home crowd to help.
“It makes guys feel at home here, we’ve got a good crowd back in C.P. so the guys will get a real taste of how it feels to play for Carleton Place,” Townend said.
Meanwhile, Clarke took a different approach to the home opener coming up.
“The home opener is always good and always exciting, but you’ve got to be motivated to play every day in this league and, if you don’t, you’re going to be beat like we did [Friday],” he explained. “We weren’t a very motivated bunch, so we’ve got to be able to play motivated on Sunday.”
