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Jr B Northmen claim West Conference title

August 4, 2016   ·   0 Comments

11-5 win over Windsor in game five

The Junior B Northmen won the Ontario Junior B Lacrosse League West Conference title with an 11-5 win over the Windsor Clippers in game five of their best of five series at the Alder Street arena on Tuesday (Aug. 2) night..

It was tight series that got underway on July 22, with a 9-2 Orangeville win in game one of the series.

The next three games were a tough all-out battle when Windsor came back to win game two by two points leaving the floor with a 7-5 win on the scoreboard.

In a series that saw teams have all the winning games in their home arena, the Northmen returned to Alder Street on July 8, for an 8-7 win in game three to lead the series 2-1.

Back in Windsor on July 31, the home floor advantage again came up when the Clippers tied the series at two – again by a one point, 8-7 win, to force the series back to Orangeville for a one game winner-take-all match-up.

Windsor opened the scoring at the midway mark in the first frame but the Northmen response was overwhelming when they scored five times before the period ended to make it a 5-1 game going into the second period.

Mike McCannell got the first two O-ville goals – one short handed – with Mike Sutton, Grayson Houghton, and Shane Hillis getting singles for the period.

Returning for the second period, the Northmen kept up the offensive pressure outscoring the Clippers 5-2 for the period to make it a 10-3 game going into the final and leaving the Windsor team scrambling to keep up.

The Clippers managed to score two in the last period with Orangeville’s Jeff Brett getting one as well, but by the time the clock got down to the last few minutes it was evident the Clippers didn’t stand a chance of getting back into the game.

The Northmen killed the clock for the last two minutes to take the win.

“We knew we were going to have to bring out best to finish them off tonight,” said Orangeville’s Mike McCannell. “It was do or die for us. We know it’s important to get to the finals so as a group we knew we were going to come out with out best

tonight and start off really strong and put a few on up on this team early. It’s not just that we got a few early, we were going to keep pushing the entire game through.”

Fans were expecting the final game to be a repeat of games three and four with a very close score but after the first period it was evident the Northmen had all the momentum.

“We weren’t really expecting anything,” McCannell said. “We just knew we had to play our best and we had to go to work and put all our strengths together and put together a good game to beat this team.”

The Northmen will now face the Green Gaels out of Clarington in the Ontario Junior B Lacrosse championship.

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