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Jr A Northmen win home opener 9-4 over Brampton Excelsiors

May 25, 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The Orangeville Junior A Northmen are now 2-2 early in the season after a hometown win over the Brampton Excelsiors on Sunday (May 20) night at Tony Rose arena.

The squad has a new coach this year and several new players – and that’s all good for this organization.

Former Junior B coach Bruce Codd stepped up to fill the position on the bench this season and brought some of the top championship winning players from the ‘B’ squad with him.

“The roster is pretty much set but we’ll probably do some new recruiting,” said Northmen GM Bob Clevely of this year’s team. “Some players we’re still looking at – especially on the right-hand side, right handed shooters. A couple of players are still at school. The games we’ve had so far, those games were tight, and that was against good teams.”

The roster has a mix of veterans and new players.

“We have 11 new players and eight returning players from last year. A lot of the new players, they played their first two years of Junior B and had back to back years of Founder’s Cups – we knew those guys would step up to the next level. Some of the guys are getting used to each other because they haven’t played before, but there’s been a good transition because with Bruce Codd coaching they know the systems and it’s made a big difference stepping up and working with him,” Clevely said.

Clevely said they are happy to have Codd on board as the new top man on the bench.

“We’ve got Bruce Codd and Bill Sanderson and both guys were on that coaching staff last year so there’s not that critical adjustment. It’s a big positive for us. He knows what they expect from him and they know what he expects from them.“

The team won their first outing of the season by a single goal when they travelled to Whitby on May 15, to take on the Warriors and left with an 8-7 win.

The following night they were in Burlington and this time the one goal difference cost them a 9-8 game.

The third game of the season was a loss – again by a single point when they went to Toronto and gave up a 10-9 game to the Beaches team.

The first home game of the season against Brampton started off with an O-ville goal from Kyle Waters early in the first period. That was matched by a Brampton goal 4 and-a-half minutes later.

Waters got the next two Orangeville goals early in the second period to give the Northmen a 3-1 lead.

The Northmen opened the scoring with two from Tyler Halls and Braydon Cresswell, before the Excelsiors could score again.

Cam Mcdonald notched a shorthanded goal late in the period.

The final period saw the Excelsiors score early but the Northmen came on strong to finish the game with three goals from Curtis Bukta, Grant Scott, and Mcdonald to win the game 9-4 and even their record for the season so far.

It’s still too early in the season to get a real feel of where the team slot in the standings but currently the Northmen are in fourth place in the 11 team League.

The Northmen will be back at Tony Rose arena this Friday (May 25) night when they host the Burlington Chiefs.

Game time is 8:00 p.m.

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