\u201cIt was close,\u201d said Head Coach Franky Dopelhammer, \u201cbut we weren\u2019t playing to our potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two teams were tied 3-3 coming out of second period in their fifth match against each other March 8 in Gatineau. They each got a goal around the mid-mark of third period. Then the Volant got a pair of empty-net goals to win the match and the right to move on to the next round in the National Capital Junior Hockey League (NCJHL) playoffs.<\/p>\n
Cougars assistant captain Eric Skyba put Vankleek Hill on the scoreboard first midway through first period, with help from team captain Mikael Bissonnette and Brendan Easterbrook. Bissonnette added another point to the Cougars\u2019 score five minutes later, with an assist from assistant captain John Mahoney.<\/p>\n
Guillaume Durocher, with help from Samuel Duval, got the Volant\u2019s first goal of the game with four minutes left in first period. During the final two minutes Samuel Lamarche, assisted by \u00c9tienne Champagnes and J\u00e9r\u00e9my Marcotte, tied up the score.<\/p>\n
Second period saw Mathis Villeneuve break the tie in the Volant\u2019s favour, with help from Champagne and Jacob \u00c9thier. In the last four minutes of the period Alexandre Saul scored an unassisted goal for the Cougars to tie up the score again.<\/p>\n
Thomas Kelly\u2019s unassisted goal broke the tie in Vankleek Hill\u2019s favour at the midpoint of third period. Then the Volant fired in a series of points during the rest of the period starting with Champagne to tie up the score again, Villeneuve to break it, and then two unassisted empty net goals by Marcotte to finish the game.<\/p>\n
The Cougars coach noted that he and the players are disappointed they did not get to move on to the second round of the playoffs. Next season, Coach Dopelhamer noted, should be different as he expects to see most, if not all, of this season\u2019s roster of players return for another try at the NCJHL title.<\/p>\n
Dopelhamer noted that only four of this season\u2019s Cougars won\u2019t be coming back because they have reached the league\u2019s 21-year-old age limit. He observed that would leave Vankleek Hill with a good core group of veterans and seasoned rookies for next year compared to some other NCJHL clubs that will see a large number of their older players leaving.<\/p>\n
Dopelhamer expressed thanks for local fan support of the Cougars during their playoffs series. He noted that at least 300 local fans showed up for all of the team\u2019s road games against the Volant and the last home game had a crowd of between 500 to 600.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Vankleek Hill Cougars are finished with hockey for the season now losing their final game in the opening round of the NCJHL playoffs series to the Gatineau-Hull Volant. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-loisirs"],"acf":[],"featured_media_global":[],"yoast_head":"\n