Jr. C Lakers bumped out of first place with loss
Midget call-up Deacan Knott stops 17 of 18 shots in relief of Taylor Hoggarth
A slow start cost the Peterborough MinCom Kawartha Lakes Realty Jr. C Lakers in their OJCLL first place showdown Wednesday night.
The Whitby Warriors rode a 4-0 lead to an 8-6 win over the Lakers at the Evinrude Centre.
It moved the Warriors (8-1) two points ahead of Peterborough (7-2) for first place with seven games left in the regular season. Whitby wins the season series 2-1 giving them the tie-breaker should the teams finish tied in the standings.
Midget call-up Deacan Knott was outstanding in goal stopping 17 of 18 shots after replacing Taylor Hoggarth in the second period with the score 7-2.
It was a bit of a turning point as Peterborough outscored Whitby 4-1 the rest of the way including a short-handed goal in the third period.
“Deacs (Knott) shut the door for us,” said Lakers captain Matt Smith.
“He’s been up with us a couple of times but that’s the first time he’s got in there and he answered the bell. He came in and did his job, for sure.”
Hoggarth has played well this year so the move was as much to shake things up. Smith said it woke the team up.
“You never like to see your goalie pulled and when you have one step in, especially a young guy, you want to perform in front of him the best you can,” Smith said.
“We came out slow,” said Lakers coach Dave Baker.
“We were coming off a couple of games we had control of where we didn’t really have to work hard or it wasn’t a tight game. Whitby came out hard and we didn’t. We had a couple of bad penalties. We had control of the third period but we just couldn’t put the ball in the net. Their goalie played well.”
It was tough to give the tiebreaker to Whitby.
“We know we’ll come up against Whitby in the final in the east,” Baker said.
The power play let them down, he said.
“My power play has to produce and it didn’t tonight. I feel it’s one of our strongest aspects of the game,” Baker said.
Carter Page and Cal Davis scored two goals each for Peterborough while Adam Churchill had a goal and three assists and Aaron Bradshaw one goal. Also adding assists were Travis Ferguson, Cam Crowley, Mike Robinson and Davis.
David Cormack and Kyle Curtis scored two goals each for Whitby with singles to Devin Gilligan, Matt Andersson, Steve Cote and Andrew Dafoe.
The Lakers next game is at 7 p.m. Saturday when they host the Gloucester Griffins at the Evinrude Centre.