Pair of shorthanded goals against cost Canadians

By: Daniel Vazzoler

For the second of back-to-back nights, the Carleton Place Canadians say they feel they outplayed their opponents, but, unlike Thursday, Carleton Place didn’t get the win as it lost 2-1 to the Hawkesbury Hawks.

“Their goaltender was better than ours,” said Canadians coach Jason Clarke. “We outplayed them 5-on-5, they scored two shorthanded goals and we need to get a save. Their goaltender was the first star of the game and played really well and our guy was just very average. You can’t have average goaltending.”

Matthew Petizian made 42 saves to pick up the win on Friday for the Hawks. While some of his saves were pucks merely hitting him, Petizian made a number of key saves at important times to either keep the game scoreless early on, or to keep his team in the lead.

Both Hawks goals were similar in style. The puck bounced past the Canadians defence while on the power play and sprung Hawkesbury penalty killers on a breakaway.

David Caza deked out Jeremie Forget this first time, less than six minutes into the game. With a little more than four minutes to play in the first period, Michael Marleau also got sprung on the shorthanded breakaway and beat Forget once more for the 2-0 lead.

“Your goaltender’s just got to come up with a big save every once in a while,” Clarke said. “We just haven’t gotten any big saves in the last two games. Last night, we totally outplayed Cornwall but we were in a dog fight because we couldn’t get a save and same thing tonight. Hawkesbury’s goalie stopped two breakaways, our goaltender didn’t. Got to have better goaltending if we’re going to continue to have success.”

Carleton Place had chances to respond to the two Hawks goals, but it was unsuccessful until the final minute of the third period when Connor Hill scored. The Canadians had an extra attacker on the ice in a situation to try and come back to tie the game, but the efforts were unsuccessful.

“Guys were working hard and competing, (the game) just came down to execution and we just couldn’t find the back of the net,” Sam Knoblauch, a Canadians assistant captain said. “I’m definitely really proud of the guys’ performance. We really worked hard and outcompeted them.”

The two teams will face off against each other again on Sunday in Carleton Place. While Knoblauch said the team is a little disappointed they weren’t rewarded with a victory for controlling the game, he also said the team remains confident heading into the second game of back-to-backs against the Hawks.

“We want to get back at these guys for stealing a game from us that we definitely outplayed them in,” he added.

After the final buzzer, tempers flared as the Canadians said they felt Petizian and the Hawks celebrated a bit too excessively for their liking.

“It was just a very disrespectful play by the goaltender from Hawkesbury,” Clarke expressed. “He over-celebrated in one of our player’s face and I don’t think it was the right move for him to do that and Connor Hill took exception to it and the goaltender got what he deserved.”

For Knoblauch, he said Sunday’s game was going to be physical either way as it is the second game in a back-to-back against the Hawks, but added the celebration and scrum at the end of the game will turn up the physical play a little bit more.

“We won’t forget about that celebration and we’ll come out hard on Sunday.”