RECAP | Ottawa West 4, Richmond 0, January 26, 2018
The Ottawa West Golden Knights met with the Richmond Royals at the Barbara Ann Scott arena, with the Golden Knights shutting out the Royals 4-0. It was their fourth and final meeting between the two teams, as the Golden Knights would tie the season series 2-2.
Based off their recent 7-1 loss to the Casselman Vikings, Head Coach Steve Sundin believed his squad had a great bounce back performance.
“It always feels better after a win, especially a shutout but we had good defense tonight and we played really well”.
In Ottawa West 7-1 loss to Casselman, the Vikings dominated the offensive zone and Ottawa’s defense had trouble clearing the zone, making this bounce back win an improvement defensively based off the team’s recent play.
“I just think we’re starting to play defensively as a team and I’ve been preaching that all year” explained Sundin. “Tonight everybody was back and got the puck away from the front of the net”.
The Richmond Royals had to make two emergency call-ups in net last night. Alex Borell made his first career CCHL Tier 2 start, standing at 5’5 and what looked to be a minor midget net minder that had no statistics or profile available online.
Matthew Bidin opened the scoring for Ottawa West in the first period, finding his fourth goal of the season and second against the Royals. The Golden Knights were leading 1-0 after one period.
Going into the second period up 1-0 was important for Steve Sundin and his squad but was happy to once again see more secondary scoring.
“It was really nice to see our bottom guys score tonight, but most importantly Justin Jamer had three assists tonight which was nice to see as he his playing really good hockey lately”.
After Tyren Boots gave the Golden Knights a 2-0 lead at 5:50 into the second period, George Young netted his second goal of the season which was his first since September 14th against Arnprior.
“I thought it was a great goal, his dad is here from Newfoundland” noted Sundin. I thought it was a nice three-way passing play and a great finish by George”.
Ottawa West would score once more before the end of the second period and did not score in the third period, ultimately recorded in huge bounce back 4-0 win.
The biggest note after the game was the fact that it was the Golden Knights first shut-out of the season. A note the Head Coach Steve Sundin was not aware of “Ohh wow I had no clue, but that’s good news because I guess we’ve blown a lot of third period leads this season”.
It was also Cameron Iob’s first career CCHL Tier 2 shut-out and he gave a lot of the credit to his defense.
“I thought our defense picked up a lot of the guys in front of the goal” said Iob. “Our forwards were pinching on their defense which gave them no chance in getting shots from the point and we dominated them in their end which gave me a chance to get the shut-out”.
The Golden Knights outshot the Royals 45-26. Justin Jamer had three assists and Tristen Taillefer scored a goal and an assist.
Going into tonight’s game against the Perth Blue Wings, Steve Sundin says that they need to play physical in a small rink.
“I coached there for two years and the building has square corners so you need to be careful when you try to ring the puck around the boards” mentioned Sundin. “It’s a small barn but they put on a good show there and we should see a good crowd there tonight”.
Puck drop is a 7:30 in Perth. You can listen to the broadcast in mixlr.com/owgkradio with the pre-game show at 7:15. Mason Detre and Diamond Dante on the call.