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Hornets advance to semi-final round of PJHL playoffs

April 5, 2017   ·   0 Comments

The Alliston Junior C Hornets hosted the Mount Forest Patriots on the ice at the New Tecumseth Recreation Centre during game five of their North Conference title series.  The Hornets wont this game 10-6 to claim the series and will now go on to face the Port Hope Panthers in the semi-final Schmaltz Cup championship.

Photo by Brian Lockhart

By Brian Lockhart
The Alliston Hornets have advanced to the next round of the Provincial Junior Hockey League provincial playoffs with a quarter-final series win over the Mount Forest Patriots.
The series took five games to finish after the Hornets won the first three but took a loss in game four on Patriots home ice.
Alliston fans were stoked for a four-game sweep when they travelled to Mount Forest on March 26, but the Patriots kept the series alive when they stopped the Hornets allowing only one goal in the first period for the night then finished off with a tie breaker in the third and an empty net goal that ended the game 3-1.
The teams were battling for the North Conference title with the Hornets being the Carruthers Division champions and the Patriots arriving on the ice as the Pollock Division title holders.
Game five of the series got under way on March 31 in Alliston.
At the end of the first period the Hornets were leading 4-2 after breaking down the Mount Forest defence and scoring three of the goals on one-on-one situations with the Patriots’ goalie.
The second frame had the Hornets widen the gap with three more goals to lead 7-3 going into the final period.
The teams matched goal for goal in the third and the game ended with a 10-6 win for the Hornets who now advance to the next round.
The third period saw the Patriots’ frustration boil over when they had three players ejected from the game on misconducts. They ended the season with two penalties still on the board.
“Their barn was really tough to play in. They’ve got good fans so that helped them a lot,” said Hornets forward Devon Gillham of the loss in Mount Forest.
Gillham had a four-point game on Friday night scoring three goals and getting one assist.
“In our game plan we heard that they gave up a lot of break-aways – with our speed we knew we could take advantage of that. I don’t think we were really planning on doing that, we just used our speed and got some awesome break-aways out of it.”
The Hornets will now face the Port Hope Panthers in the next round. The Panthers won their division in a series with the Lakefield Chiefs that went seven games.
“We have a system. If it works, it’s going to work. We don’t really focus on their game, we focus on our game,” Gillham said of moving forward in the playoffs.
At press time the scheduled for the Alliston/Port Hope series had not yet been decided.

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