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League News
Rowe Division Final Opens tonight
The Antigonish Jr. Bulldogs go into the Rowe Division Final knowing if they can win, it will be one more step to capturing their fourth consecutive Nova Scotia Junior Hockey Championship.
Their opponent will be fierce rival the Pictou County Scotians with Game 1 in Antigonish Friday night at 7:30 before moving back to Trenton for Game 2 Sunday evening at 6:00 p.m.
These two clubs played eight games during the regular season with Antigonish going 6-2-0 while the Scotians finished 2-5-1. The Bulldogs won 4-3 in a shoot-out and by scores of 7-4, 6-3, 8-0 and 4-0 and 5-1.
The Scotians meanwhile had wins of 6-2 and 6-4 but were outscored 39-23 in the eight games.
The big thing for the Scotians will be to somehow spread out their offence as they have two exceptional offensive threats in League Scoring Champion Lane Lochead and Matt Carson. Lochead led the league with 54 points on 19 goals and 35 assists for 54 points while Carson scored 18 times and collected 25 assists for 43 points.
After that, the third place team member Wyatt Spence finished with 7 goals and 17 assists for 24 points and Cale MacLaughlin with 7 goals and 13 assists for 20 points. They were the only four players to finish with 20 points or more in the regular season. Last year’s League Scoring Champion Nate Supryka only played 12 games for the Scotians in 24-25 but did finish with 7 goals and 4 assists for 11 points.
Besides the League’s Leading Scorer, the Scotians also had the number one goaltender in the League with Eli James who finished with a 16-6-0 record, a 2.22 goals against average, a .935 save percentage and 2 shut-outs while stopping 725 of 775 shots he faced.
The Bulldogs if they can somehow keep Lochead and Carson bottled up have proven they have a superior offence as they had five players in Tully Grant, Owen Forsythe, Venel Campbell, Zachary Lorette and Will MacKinnon all with between 33 and 38 points ands other players with 20 points or more.
Goaltending was not an issue as Adam Tkacz finished 13-3-0 stopping 335 of 371 shots while garnering 3 shut-outs and a 2.25 goals against average and a .903 save percentage.
As for special teams, they were relatively even with the Bulldogs connecting on 25% of their power-play opportunities and Pictou on 23% of their power-plays. As for Penalty killing, The Bulldogs killed off 88% off their penalties and the Scotians 83%.
The winner of this series will go onto play the winner of the Colts-Lumberjacks series for the provincial championship. A reminder once again of Game 1 tonight in Antigonish at 7:30 and Game 2 back in Trenton Sunday night at 6:00 p.m.