NEWS

The Stouffville Spirit, despite significantly outshooting their opponent, fell in a heart-breaking loss, 5-3 to the NOJHL champion Soo Thunderbrids (photo credit - James Mirabelli) in the championship game of the 2012 Dudley Hewitt Cup.

Jon Hall once again took to the net, but this time in the most important game of his junior career.  In net for the Thunderbirds was John Kleinhans, the netminder the Spirit chased from the net in the final round-robin game.  This night would proved to be much different than that previous match-up as Kleinhams took home Player-of-the-Game honours with a 44 save performance. 

Just over a minute into the game, with the Thunderbrids already serving a penalty, defenceman Paul Geiger notched the first goal of the game, giving Stouffville an early 1-0 lead.  The lead was short-lived however, as Nick Romano tied the game at one just over nine minutes into the game.  Drake Caggiula would restore the Spirit lead, with yet another assist to Geiger, and 10 seconds later it was 2-2 on a goal from Greg Sartoretto.  Yet another high-scoring period saw the teams head to the break tied at two with Stouffville outshooting the Soo 10-5.

The second period would see much of the same as the Spirit carried the play, outshooting the Thunderbirds 13-5, yet, Soo would score the only goal of the period as Jake Wright potted a goal just over five minutes in.  This marked the first lead that the Soo had on Stouffville and Kleinhans would keep it that way as the second intermission approached.

Sensing the inevitable, the Soo turned up the pressure in the third and after a fairly even period, the Thunderbirds doubled their lead with two and a half minutes to play.  Could the cardiac kids do it again?  Just over a minute later, Alex Botten cut that two goal lead in half, giving the Spirit faithful that faint ray of hope.  It was not meant to be however, as Micky Sartoretto crushed Stouffville’s comeback attempt by burying an empty-netter to clinch the T-Birds first-ever Central Canadian title.

Final shots on goal were 47-16 for the Spirit, but as if often the case in championship hockey, goaltending was the difference.  Played in front of 784 spectators, including numerous fans that had made the nearly 10 hour trip from Stouffville, OJHL Baycon Construction Top Defenceman Paul Geiger was the Spirit’s Player of the Game, notching a first period goal and an assist.

Other awards presented following the game, included the Top Goaltender, to Wisconsin’s Tanner Milliron, Top Forward to Soo’s Matt Amadio, and Top Defenceman to the Spirit’s star Paul Geiger.

For a full game summary, please CLICK HERE.

The Soo Thunderbirds will now represent the Central Canada region at the 2012 RBC Cup being held in Humboldt, Saskatchewan.  The entire Ontario Junior Hockey League would like to wish them the best of luck in their quest for the National Junior ‘A’ Championship. 

Congratulations are also in order for the 2011-12 OJHL champion Stouffville Spirit on a tremendous season and for making the entire league extremely proud with their efforts the entire year and while in Thunder Bay.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our great fans for the support this past season!  Many new initiatives are already in the works for 2012-13 and we are very much looking forward to starting everything up again in the fall!