By: Daniel Vazzoler
The Carleton Place Canadians special teams flexed their muscles Friday night in a 4-0 victory over the Kemptville 73’s.
The power play went 2-for-3 in the game, while the penalty killing unit was perfect in keeping Kemptville off the scoreboard on all four of its opportunities and even chipped in a short-handed goal.
“It’s kind of funny, we really struggled in Thursday’s practice on the power play and the guys were kind of rattled, to be honest with you, during practice because the power play was pretty bad,” Canadians coach Jason Clarke said, chuckling. “It was pretty nice to see us score two power play goals, but it was just a good effort today.”
Carleton Place scored its two goals on the man advantage in the first period. First, Travis Broughman opened the scoring in the first minute, beating Nick Bond through the goalie’s legs. In the final few minutes of the period, Noah Tooke blasted a one-timed slap shot that beat Bond low on the blocker side, ringing his shot off the post and in for the goal.
“I think over the last three or four weeks, our power play has really been clicking,” Sam Knoblauch, assistant captain and member of the power play unit, said. “It’s just moving the puck quick and guys have a good idea where others are going to be, so we have a lot of options on the power play.”
The Canadians scored their power play goals on the first two Kemptville penalties of the game, and Carleton Place actually scored on each of the first three penalties of the game with the short-handed goal in the second period.
Tim Theocharidis grabbed the loose puck off the face-off in the Carleton Place and he spotted open ice for him to skate into. With his skating ability, the lane led him all the way to the Kemptville end. Theocharidis cut into the slot as he crossed the blue-line to open the shooting lane for him. His quick wrist shot slid through Bond’s legs to open up a 3-0 lead.
To cap off the scoring, Broughman and Sam Allison rushed down the ice on a 2-on-1 rush late in the second period. Allison waited out the 73’s defender and slipped the puck around the sprawled-out defender to set up Broughman with a one-timer opportunity. Broughman made no mistake on the chance and scored his 30th goal of the season.
“It means a lot (to get 30 goals),” Broughman said. “Coming in here, not knowing what this league was about and just stepping up to be one of the top guys on the team to help the boys out.”
“He’s been the most consistent player, not just on our team but probably in the entire league,” his coach added. “He hasn’t taken a night off in the 56 games he’s played this year. The kid’s unbelievable, he just comes to the rink every day and you get the same effort, same everything from him all the time and he just hasn’t had a bad game all year.”
Along with the strong performance from the team as a whole, Jeremie Forget made a 28-save shut-out – his seventh shut-out of the season – look easy.
“There were a couple of scrambles in the first period where gobbled a few things up and didn’t complicate things,” Clarke stated. “A couple of saves he made from moving side-to-side and there were no rebounds when there was traffic. He made things look simple, but he did make a few difficult saves but there were no second or third chances. He was gobbling everything up, which is obviously important as a goalie.”
Friday’s win was the Canadians 50th win of the year and makes Sunday’s game against the Ottawa Jr. Senators one where Carleton Place can lock up the top spot in the CCHL heading into the playoffs.
“When we play Ottawa, it’s a big game,” Knoblauch expressed. “They’re definitely the other top team in the league and games (this year) have all been really good and they’ve all been pretty close. There’s a rivalry there and the guys will be ready to play. Should be a good game.”
The job for Clarke is to ensure the Canadians treat Sunday’s game as “just another game.”
“I think it’s just like every other game,” Clarke added. “Ottawa’s rolling right now and we’re going to have our hands full. They’re on a pretty long winning streak and they’re handling teams pretty easily right now. I think we’ll be in real tough on Sunday, there’s no doubt about that.”
