Lightning strikes New Blue

It has been confirmed that the Morrisburg Junior Lions will be back on the ice this fall, as they skate into their first season with the National Capital Junior Hockey League (NCJHL).

President/general manager Kevin Casselman has announced that the Lions have been accepted into the National Capital League for the upcoming season.

“We are excited to continue to offer junior hockey in Morrisburg,” says Casselman, who says he was notified of the Lions acceptance through an e-mail from league president Ian McRae, immediately following a Monday, April 20 league meeting.

The e-mail reads, “Morrisburg Lions were accepted with a vote of 9-0. Welcome aboard.”

Also in the e-mail it was announced the NCJHL will play in two divisions, a South Division which will include the Morrisburg Lions with teams from Embrun, North Dundas, St. Isidore and Vankleek Hill. 

The North Division will include La Peche, Papineauville, Cumberland and Rockland.

According to the e-mail, “each team will play three home and three away games in its division and one home and one away against the other division. Protected areas will be minor hockey base for Morrisburg.”

“As was mentioned it was a unanimous vote of 9-0 from the league teams for our acceptance, which is really encouraging,” says Casselman.

According to Casselman, the Lions management is in the process of finalizing everything from last season. “We will be sitting down over the next couple weeks to close up outstanding business within the Rideau-St. Lawrence conference and following that we will be closing up affairs and business with the Eastern Ontario Junior Hockey league.”

Casselman expects team management to be busy over the next months with the plans for talks with eligible returning players, coaching staff, team volunteers and graduating midget players and local minor hockey associations.

“We will try our best to reach out to everyone with our plans,” says Casselman. “If anyone has questions, please do not hesitate to contact us directly. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our visions and objectives.”

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The men’s and ladies’ teams, representing the Morrisburg Golf Club in the Ottawa Valley Golf Association’s Intersectional Match play have stalled in their respective divisions

For the third consecutive year, the men’s and ladies intersectional teams have finished in second spot, the ladies to remain in Division K and the Men to remain in Division O.

This past week, each of the teams hosted their leg of the Matches. Last Monday, July 9 the ladies finished in second spot behind Eagle Creek, the latter earning 41 points out of a possible 42 while the Morrisburg entry picked up 25.

Intersectional match play involves teams of seven players each with golfers from four clubs at each level. Each team member plays a match against the three opposing clubs and each has the potential of six points.

For Eagle Creek, it was almost a clean sweep. The only golfer who stood in their way was Lori Ann Davies of Morrisburg who collected a single point from her Eagle Creek player, Kendra Read.

Davies led the Morrisburg entry with five points, while Anita Cooper, Linda Barclay, Judy Laurin, Stephanie Cochrane and Monique Patenaude all added four points. Carolyn Weegar and Vicki Boivin contributed two points apiece.

The other two teams competing in the level K division were from Poplar Grove and the Iroquois Golf Club.

Nelly Leightizer led the Iroquois entry with four points, while Sally O’Brien and Betty Locke contributed two points apiece, and Majorie Lapier and Mary Jean Craig collected one point each.

The Morrisburg men’s club hosted their action on Sunday with just three clubs competing.

Finishing in first place for the right to move up a division in next year’s play was Falcon Ridge with 32 points.

Morrisburg was second with 21 and Rideau Glen in third with seven. (The men’s teams consist of  10 players each).

Larry Cooper, Ron Lapier and Robert Mann collected four points apiece for Morrisburg, while Jordie MacDonald, Gary Breyer, Kirk Barkley and Brian McNairn added two points each. Eric Wemerman collected a single point and Charlie Moore and Lee Beaupre were blanked.

The Intersectionals are ladder type events with the winner moving up a rung, second place having to host the next year’s event and last place dropping down a rung. The object is to climb to the top rung.

Because their second place finishes were the third in a row for the two Morrisburg teams, neither will have to host next year.

[…]

The Morrisburg Junior B Lions picked up their first point of the young season here Sunday afternoon, when they held the Char-Lan Rebels to a regulation time 3-3 tie before skating through a scoreless five minute sudden death penalty and into a shoot out.

During the three player shoot out, the Lions first shooter, Tyler Young beat Rebels’ goaltender Ryan Cooper, but that was answered when the Rebels’ second shooter, Alexandre Gendron counted against goaltender John Gilmer.

When the three player shoot out ended with a goal for each team, that forced the game into sudden death. The two goaltenders held their own against another four shooters before Kevin Veileux found the spot to give the Rebels the 4-3 shoot-out win.

Shooters for the Lions were Young, Christian Leger, Brandon Mullin, Dallas Blacksmith, Michael Paquette, Taylor Eamon, Drew Veenstra and Robbie Scott.

“It was a very exciting game,” says Lions general manager, Kevin Casselman. “We are pleased with the team and their play. They stayed to the game plan pretty well.”

According to Casselman, after the opening weekend of games, the coaches were looking for more emphasis on defensive zone coverage and reducing the number of odd man rushes.”

“John Gilmer played very well in net, Sunday. He provided us with some solid goaltending and the opportunity to win the game.”

With the arena in Morrisburg in full swing, the Lions were on home ice for their regular weekly practise last week and had a solid 22 man roster workout.

“This provided our coaching staff the opportunity to look at various options for line combinations and allowed them to work on some specific game adjustments,” says Casselman

Sunday’s attendance was 150, which according to Casselman, is a good crowd for a Sunday afternoon at this time of the year. “It was a great crowd, and they certainly left well-entertained.”

The single point for the tie puts the Lions on the board in fifth place in the St. Lawrence Division. The Winchester Hawks lead the division, undefeated in four games, while the Casselman Vikings are in second place with seven points on three wins and one overtime loss. The Rebels have four points and the Alexandria Glens three.

Sunday, the Rebels out shot the Lions 41-34. The Rebels sat out 24 minutes on eight infractions, and the Lions saw 18 minutes in nine infractions. Both teams counted one power-play goal.

Jeremy McFarlane put the Rebels on the scoreboard at 12:51 of the first period while the Rebels were playing short-handed. That lasted until very early in the second period when Lions right winger Isaac Brownlee (from Christian Leger and Brandon Mullin) put the puck past former Lions goaltender Ryan Cooper (traded to the Rebels for future considerations in early September).

The Lions dominated second period play, but could not get another goal past Cooper.

Going into the third period, tied 1-1, Alexandre Gendron scored on the Rebels’ power play for a 2-1 Rebels’ advantage at 2:12.

Just 16 seconds later, the Lions overager Drew Veenstra (from Peter Ketcheson and Tyler Young) answered to again even it.

Then at 4:33 of the third period, Lions team captain Taylor Eamon made the connection for the Lions with help from three-year veteran forward Michael Paquette and for the first time in the game, the Lions were in the lead.

They held on with some great defence and great play from Gilmer until 14:41 when Nick Sanseverino connected for the Rebels to make it  3-3.

With neither team able to count in the remainder of the game and the Lions able to kill off 55 seconds of a two minute roughing minor to Alex Kidd (19:05) in the final minute, the game went into five minute sudden death overtime.

The four on four overtime was scoreless (the Lions killed off the remaining half minute of the Kidd penalty), setting the stage for the shoot out which went in the Rebels favour with the Gendron counter.

Coming up, the Lions travel to Winchester this Friday night, September 27th, for an 8:15 p.m. start. Saturday night they are at home to the Alexandria Glens. Game time is 7:30 p.m. 

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