The last time the St. Michael’s Buzzers made a visit at the Alder Street Recreation Centre to take on the Orangeville Crushers in October, late game heroics were required to push the game into a shootout before ultimately emerging with a come from behind victory on the strength of the shootout winner by Mike Hawkrigg.
This time around, Hawkrigg once again provided the late game heroics, scoring with only forty two seconds left to give the Buzzers new life but there would be no shootout victory for St. Michael’s as Alex Guptill notched the winner – the only player to score in the shootout.

The concern coming into the game on the part of the Buzzers’ coaching staff was the eight day layoff St. Michael’s had endured since their last game action and if the team would be able to shake off the rust early on. Those concerns were well founded in the first period as the Buzzers appeared sluggish and struggled to get anything going offensively.

Luckily for St. Michael’s, Orangeville was not much better in the first period and only managed to score once when Alex Guptill split the Buzzers’ defence while on the power play before beating netminder Joe D’Elia to open the scoring.

“I guess all things being considered, it wasn’t a bad level of competitiveness tonight but our team and Orangeville started slow,” said Buzzers’ Head Coach Mike DePellegrin. “Once we got going, we got our legs under us and we competed fairly hard.”

That was very much the case as the Buzzers appeared with much more jump and energy in the second period, climbing to a 2-1 lead by the 12:31 mark. Tyler Forbes scored on the power play at the 11:12 mark – his eighth goal of the season – to tie it. Just over a minute later, Lucas Lessio extended his goal scoring streak to six games when he shovelled in a rebound from the top of the crease to put St. Michael’s in front.

Nicholas Vassos tied the game for Orangeville at 16:51 of the second period but Dan Ciampini responded for St. Michael’s just over two minutes later with a tremendous individual effort when he stole the puck just inside the Crushers’ blueline before cutting in and lifting a backhand shot over the glove of netminder Mike Santaguida from an impossible angle.

Starting the third period with a 3-2 lead, St. Michael’s sat back and allowed Orangeville to set the pace early on in the final frame. At the 3:17 mark, Griffin Lacey drew the Crushers even with a blast from just inside the blueline on the power play. Midway through the period, Trent Hawke gave Orangeville the lead when he swung a shot toward the net from a bad angle that found its way past D’Elia.

“I thought the game was kind of a see-saw battle back and forth,” said DePellegrin. “It was a slow start to the game and I thought that in the second half of the second period and the beginning of the third period, we started to sit back a little bit and we didn’t press them as much as we should have. We’re not a very good team when we’re sitting back and that led to some mistakes.”

The power play, often a strength of the Buzzers ranked third overall in the CCHL, struggled somewhat against the Crushers going one for six including scuffling through two late power play chances to tie the game.

“Our power play’s ranked third in the league and looking at that stat, it kind of surprises me at times,” said DePellegrin. “When we’re effective, we’re keeping it really simple and when we’re ineffective, we’re trying to look for plays that aren’t there. We struggle with that often, we have talented players but when they don’t keep it simple, they struggle.”

Tying the game late in the third period with six attackers on the ice on a shot from Mike Hawkrigg allowed the Buzzers to salvage at least the one point from an overtime loss. Nevertheless though, DePellegrin explained that the loss after starting the third period with the lead was a disappointing result.

“It’s always positive when it’s crunch time and the game is on the line and you’re able to come back and tie it with the goalie pulled,” said DePellegrin. “I guess that’s a positive but losing the game afterwards even though we got a point out of it was disappointing.”

Overtime settled nothing so the game went to a shootout. None of Tyler Forbes, Dan Ciampini or Mike Hawkrigg could score for St. Michael’s while Joe D’Elia turned aside Griffin Lacey and Nicholas Vassos – Orangeville’s first two shooters. Alex Guptill though pulled off a slick backhand to forehand deke to seal the deal for the Crushers.