Photo/MIKE MALONEY CRUSHER VETERAN Trevor Branning digs at the pads of Seguin Bruins goaltender Lincoln Brady in Junior A action at the Alder St Community Centre on Friday. Christmas came to the Crushers dressing room a few days early last week. While it’s yet to be determined whether a gift from Santa or Scrooge, the team has welcomed Thomas Milne to Orangeville to take up position behind the bench as the new head coach.

Milne becomes the third person to step into the role this season with the struggling club.

He inherits the job from Charlie Bartlett, who stepped into the void created when Steve Chelios was released from his duties at the end of October.

No stranger to the league, Milne comes to the team from Stouffville where he ended up as an assistant coach this season, after he lost a head coach position when Couchiching withdrew from the league. Prior to that, he guided the Aurora Tigers to the top when they won the Royal Bank Cup in 2003-04.

Milne makes no pretentious claims on what the remainder of this season holds for the team. While the principal goal at this moment is to "stabilize the team" and hold onto one of the remaining wildcard playoff berths, he knows they have their work cut out for them.

"This is a resilient group of kids here. They have the right work ethic and sooner or later the hockey gods will let that come full circle if they keep working hard," says Milne.

Top of his list of "to do's" with the players, is get back to fundamentals. He cites the wealth of young talent the team has but that talent needs maturing. With a lot of speed up front and depth in goal, Milne says right now, defence is their achilles heel.

" One thing the guys have to do is improve the play in their own zone. We make a little mistake and it gets magnified a thousand time."

And those little mistakes continued to plague the team over the past weekend.

On Friday night at home to Seguin, Sean Poitras' goal at 11:41 of the second looked like it would be the needed spark to get things going against the Bruins but less than a minute later, a turnover in their own end gave Seguin a chance they were not about to miss to restore their lead at 2-1.

An early third period powerplay marker combined with another goal in the final second spoiled a gritty effort from the Crushers, sending the Bruins back north with a 4-1 win.

Goaltender Matt Kinsella got the nod in net to face his former team mates when the Collingwood Blues came calling on Saturday.

Down 3-0 at the midway point of the second, Will Munson teamed up with Louis DAvino and Jeremy Wick to put Orangeville on the board with a powerplay marker at 10:44. Nine seconds later, DAvino set up Poitras who made no mistakes and narrowed the Colling wood lead to one.

Collingwood showed no mercy on Kinsella, scoring again just before the end of the period to end his night in goal. In the third, it was more of the same with Colingwood bookmarking a Matt Crilly marker assisted by DAvino to seal the scoresheet at 6-3 in favour of the Blues.

This week, Orangeville sees themselves spending a few days in Newmarket participating in the Junior A Showcase Tournament.

Featuring 16 teams representing junior teams from Canada and the United States, the tournament will see squads play three divisional games over Wednesday and Thursday before playoffs on Friday and semi final and final action on Saturday. For more information and schedules for the tournament, go to the Newmarket Hurricanes website at www.newmarkethurricanes. com and follow the links.