Dec 24, 2018 | mproulx | 291 views
Tigers Double-Up Warriors 6-3
The Welland Niagara Street Pharmacy/Gene's Skate Sharpening Tigers, winners of eight straight league games and undefeated in ten, steamrolled past the Stoney Creek Warriors 6-3 in Niagara District Atom Doherty action at Valley Park Arena on Sunday afternoon.
Mason Risto recorded his first hat-trick of the season and Brennen Hagar, Colby Franchetti and Tanner Cutler each scored as all three lines marked up the scoresheet. Carter Kelly (2), Matteo Mete, Carson McComber, Denton Helder and Julian Belcastro picked up the game's helpers with Helder's effort on the Tiger's third goal being especially notable. Equally as impressive as the offence on the day was how the Tigers nearly completely shut down the league's third most potent offence when playing five aside.
Deson Moriarity, the league's third leading scorer with 22 goals in 20 games would net a powerplay goal with under four minutes to play in the second on one of the very few chances the Warriors had up to that point and Julien Loiselle would record his fourteenth two minutes later while also being a man up. Evan Corriveau stood tall during a brief flurry of quality scoring chances to begin the third and the Warriors were kept from further closing the gap until Loiselle buried his fifthteenth of the season with two minutes left to play in the game to make the final score more respectable than the total gameplay actually allowed.
Much of the latter half of the game was marred by penalties with the Warriors taking seventeen minutes overall, including a five minute major that the Tigers capitalized on. Welland made six trips of their own to the sin bin, getting bit on two occasions.
The Tigers will compete in the Pelham Regional Silver Stick Championships starting December 27th with a 10:40am game on Thursday morning against Lincoln in Port Colborne. They will then take on St. Mary's Rock at 4:10pm in Pelham that afternoon before closing out the round-robin portion with a 8:30am game against Niagara Falls on Friday also in Pelham. Quarterfinal games will be taking place in Port Colborne, Pelham and Welland on Friday afternoon once teams are re-seeded from the preliminary results. Should Welland win their B pool, their quarterfinal game would take place in Welland at 2:15pm.
Welland's final nine games of the regular season will resume with a home game against the Niagara Falls Flyers on January 7th at 6:50pm.