Schomberg Cougars on the brink of elimination against Alliston
By Bill Rea

Todd Cantelon came close to putting his mates in the lead in the first period Thursday on this breakaway while his mates were playing two men short, but goalie Ilan Kilimnik was up to the challenge.

The Schomberg Cougars take to the ice tomorrow (Thursday) night for the fourth game of their play-off series with the Alliston Hornets.

And their backs are pressed to the proverbial wall.

The Hornets have won the first three games in the series, but if the Cougars play the way they did in the third period of Sunday's game, the Alliston crew could be in trouble.

"That was the first time this year that we played liked a team," Head Coach Gary Waldrum said he told his men at the end of the third game in the series Sunday. "There was no sulking. Everybody did what it took to win."

Unfortunately for the local heroes of junior C hockey, that period came when the Cougars were already deep in a 6-2 hole, and their impressive performance was only good enough to close the gap to 7- 5.

That was a big improvement over the first game in the series Thursday, in which the Cougars did a credible job in the first period, held their own in the second, and might just as well not have bothered to come out for the third as they were dropped 9-1.

The Schomberg 2 club lost this match to their TNT foes, but ended up with the consolation title.

"Absolute total lack of discipline," was the way Waldrum summed up that effort, in which the team spent a considerable amount of time killing penalties, particularly in the third period.

The Cougars' lone goal came in the first period, while the side was killing a major penalty. Joe Digirolamo connected, helped out by Scott Georgopoulos.

Alliston was ahead 3-1 at the end of the first period, adding two more in the second and four in the third.

"It'll be a pretty short play-off run if we don't find a way to discipline ourselves," Waldrum remarked."We're healthy now and we have the players to compete. The opportunity is there."

They got the opportunity to show improvement in Alliston Friday night, and they did. But the enhanced performance was not enough to secure the side a win. They fell 5-2. The match was a little closer than that score would indicate. Alliston went up 4-2 with a couple of minutes left in the third, and the Cougars pulled their goalie in the hopes of drawing even. That enabled the Hornets to ice the win with an empty-net marker late in the frame.

Mitch Ronan got three goals in Sunday's outing in Alliston.

Mike Digirolamo led the attack for the side with a goal and an assist. Blake Elliot got the other marker and John DeRosa earned an assist.

The start of Sunday's match was anything but encouraging for the Cougars. They were down 4-0 by the end of the first period, and Alliston added a power-play marker early in the second, before Mike Shuryn got his mates on the board with an unassisted effort.

Shuryn and Matt Steenhoek helped set up Mitch Ronan a couple of minutes later for a powerplay goal.

But Alliston added another goal with 99 seconds left in the frame, then scored again with less than two minutes gone in the third.

But Ronan connected for another power-play goal, with help from DeRosa and Shuryn, then bagged his hat trick, with assistance from Shuryn and Elliot.

Schomberg received a major break with a little more than nine minutes on the clock when an Alliston player drew a major penalty after he levelled Shuryn, but the side was only able to get one goal from the fiveminute advantage. Elliot connected from Jason McMann and Ronan.

"It's the playoffs," Ronan remarked later, reacting to his hat trick. "You do what you've got to do."

But despite the loss, he said the team's effort was a confidence builder.

Avoiding penalties will be key to any come back the guys can mount, Ronan added.

"We can definitely beat them," he said. We've got to stay out of the box."

"We dominate them fiveon five," he added. "We can beat them, no problem."

Waldrum was hoping that the third period effort can continue tomorrow, and be sustained for the whole match.

"They'll be in serious trouble if we can put together 60 minutes like that," he said. "It all depends on the players."

"If nothing else," he added, "we proved that if they're willing to pay the price, they can power their way back."

The fourth game in the series goes tomorrow night in Schomberg, starting at 8:15 p.m. If a fifth game is required, it will be Sunday at at 7:30 p.m. in Alliston. Subsequent games are planned for Monday in Schomberg starting at 7:30 and a seventh game will be next Thursday (Feb. 22) in Alliston at 7:30 p.m.