Stewardson, Maines shine; Blade blank Lakeshore 6-0
Take 2-0 semi-final lead
Blenheim Blades, playing at the top of their game, got a shutout performance from netminder Eric Stewardson and two goals and an assist from Dustin Maines, to blank the Lakeshore Canadiens 6-0 and take a two-games-to-none lead in their best-of-seven Provincial Junior Hockey League Stobbs Division semi-final series before 606 fans Sunday night at the Blenheim arena.
The win followed up Friday’s Game 1 4-2 victory in Lakeshore that featured an empty net goal by Stewardson.
The series now moves back to Lakeshore for Game 3 Friday at 7 p.m., with Game 4 next Sunday in Blenheim at 7 as well.
These two teams met in the semi-finals in 2014 in the series that saw the infamous “lights out” game in which the Blades, up in the series 2-0, had a 5-4 lead in Game 3 in Lakeshore only to have the arena lights go out and the game called off with just a little over five minutes to play.
The Ontario Hockey Association ruled that the entire game had to be replayed and Lakeshore (then Belle River) came back to win the series in six games.
It will be up to this year’s squad to make sure that does not happen again.
In Sunday’s win the Blades got on the board early when Maines, who now has three goals and 11 points in the playoffs, scored on a powerplay at 4:57 of the first period with assists going to Owen Bateman and Kier Cumming.
The goal was the only tally of the first period before the Blades exploded for four more in the middle 20 minutes sending Lakeshore starting goalie Colin Tetreault to the bench. He was replaced halfway through the period by backup minor hockey goalie Jared Ratko.
Braeden Allore, Drew Marlatt, Michael Vanek and Matt Clark scored the second period goals, with Marlatt’s coming on a powerplay.
For Allore the goal was his first of the playoffs, with Vanek getting his first, Marlatt his third and Clark his fourth.
Maines then finished off the scoring with his second of the night at 2:35 of the third period.
Overall on the night Bateman had two assists, as did Austin Bentley, with Cumming, Brayden Hopkins, Nick Delyzer, John Montgomery, Maines, Clark and minor hockey call ups Shawn Henderson and Nick Tetreault adding one each.
In racking up his fourth shutout of the year Stewardson stopped all 33 Lakeshore shots. Earlier this season he blanked the Canadiens 4-0.
The Canadiens, who during the regular season led all PJHL teams in powerplay goal scoring percentage, went 0-8 on the night.
BLADES BITS: The 50/50 was $513 making it an extra special night for one fan…Keegan MacVoy, Patrick Wright, and Zach Horvath remained out of the lineup with injuries, however the Blades did get Bentley back after he missed Friday’s series opener…The Blades fired 33 shots on the Lakeshore net…In the other semi-final Essex ’73s beat Amherstburg Admirals 3-2 to take a 2-0 series lead.
