Long weekend for Northmen A's

IN THEIR BEST SHOWING so far this season, the Junior A Northmen rallied to defeat the league leading Ottawa Titans 9-1 before the hometown crowd on Sunday afternoon. Photo/MIKE MALONEY The weekend for the Rayburn Construction Junior A Northmen was a lot like the weather, cold and rainy with a few sunny periods.

It started off at home Friday night when the league champion, Six Nations Arrows came to town for the first meeting of the two, since the 2005 OLA finals.

Orangeville found themselves in trouble early, spotting the Arrows a 7-2 lead before finally coming alive, drawing back to within one. Six Nations turned up the heat and pulled away to hand the Northmen their third consecutive defeat, 12-8, before the hometown crowd.

Sunday, however, it was an entirely different story.

Facing the undefeated league leading Ottawa, Orangeville came up with their best game to date this season to defeat the Titans.

Glen Bryan got things started for the Northmen when he snapped a shot through traffic in front of the Ottawa net to put them out front by one at 12:56.

Two minutes later, Brady Campbell feed a pass to Nate Sanderson who dropped it over the shoulder of Titan goalie Joe Tallis for Orangeville's second of the afternoon.

Jessie Gamble would notch his first of two 45 seconds after that and seemed to have finally shaken off the poor showings in their last few games.

In the second, the Northmen continued to roll.

Sanderson and Shawn Gilles each added markers in the first half of the second while a beautiful long pass from Anthony Lackey found Matt Lyons alone deep in the Titan end to give Orangeville a commanding 6-0 lead going into the third.

Backed by a solid performance in goal from Mike Poulin who also added to the offensive effort by contributing two assists, Orangeville continued to widen their lead.

Gamble popped his second and a single from Matt MacLeod put the score at 8-0 before Ottawa capitalizing on a delayed penalty call, caught the Northmen napping for their lone marker of the game, with 7:49 left to play.

Bryan wrapped the scoring with 26 seconds on the clock, sending Ottawa home with their first loss, 9-1 at the hands of the Northmen.

Tuesday night in Toronto however, dark clouds returned over the Northmen camp.

Still smarting from being swept by Orangeville in the 2005 playoffs, the Beaches were itching for a rematch.

Bryan started it off early with a power play marker just two minutes into the game.

Toronto responded in kind moments later with one of their own, the first of six power play goals they would tally on the night. Two more Beaches goals put the Northmen on notice, it wasn't going to be as easy.

Jamie Kirk narrowed the gap at 3-2 for Toronto heading into the second.

Beaches' Kevin Ross continued to be a thorn in the Northmen side. He tallied for a pair off the top of two before another Orangeville man advantage would help them narrow the gap at 5-3.

Toronto continued to pour on the offence while the Orangeville attack sputtered.

Two more Beaches goals went on the board before Jeff Ivey managed to get one past Brent Kilkot.

Another goal from Ross brought tempers to the boiling point and a melee in front of Toronto's bench. A total of seven players were ejected and left Orangeville unsuccessfully killing a five minute major which the Beaches used to their advantage, adding two more goals.

Ivey would add one more before the buzzer sounded a merciful end to the game with Toronto

doubling up over Orangeville by a final score of 10-5.

After the game, coach Matt Sawyer pulled no punches on the play of his team. Citing the poor efforts of both the power play and penalty kill special teams, "It's back to square one. We didn't come to play tonight".

While not raising warning flags yet, he said that if the team is going to win, they are going to have to have more games like the one on Sunday against Ottawa where everyone showed up to play and gave a total team effort.

With another meeting looming next week against the Arrows in Six Nations, this weekend looks as good a time as any, for them to pick up the pace, facing off against the only two teams lower in the standings than themselves.

Friday night sees them on the road for an 8 p.m start against the Excelsiors in Brampton then return will home Sunday night to host Mississauga, game time for this one being 7 p.m.