Corey Jewitt leads Wellington scorers with 27 goals this season. (Jason Parks/Gazette Staff)
It’s nip and tuck for the Wellington Dukes and their designs on claiming the Eastern Conference’s second seed for the 2024 Ontario Junior Hockey League playoffs.
With a home-and-home set with the Lindsay Muskies and a Feb. 29th road meeting with the Leamington Flyers remaining, the Dukes find themselves with their fate partly in their own hands.
As of Tuesday, Wellington (32-18-3) were in a tie for second with the St. Mike’s Buzzers with 67 points although the tenants of College School Arena have a game in hand on the Dukes. The Cobourg Cougars trail second place by a point but have a game in hand on the Buzzers and two on Wellington.
Examining the OJHL schedule tea leaves and making a few projections, Wellington is going to need a minimum of five points and more likely the full six out of their next three games and a little help along the way–preferably no three point games by teams below them.
Working in Wellington’s favour is that the team has accumulated 32 wins through 53 games and would hold the first tie break should any team below them match their point total. Again, that’s assuming Wellington keeps their foot to the gas pedal through to the end of the regular season.
The Dukes managed a split of their four games over the busy Family Day weekend.
The Dukes were 4-2 winners in Aurora on Thursday afternoon. In front of 45 souls at the Aurora Community Centre seeking shelter from the driving snow, Wellington got goals from Pana Efraimidis, Caleb MacDonald, Will Mitchell and Zach Carrier. Netminder Shane Shelest made 21 saves for his 13th win of the season.
On Friday, the Dukes missed out on a chance to quite the Buzzers and dropped a 5-2 road decision to St. Mike’s.
Brad Barker opened the scoring for Wellington at 9:42 of the first but the Buzzers tallied the next three goals to take a 3-1 lead to the dressing room for the second intermission.
Wellington’s Nick Dipaolo fired home his ninth of the season just 36 seconds into the third to make it a one goal game but Toby Adamson potted an insurance goal at the 7:41 mark to seal the game for the hosts.
Wellington went for an early pull of Jack Lisson and Marco Izzo fired the puck into the yawning Dukes cage at 17:37.
On Sunday, Wellington went back to Mr. Lisson and the freshman managed to engineer his 15th win of the year with 40 saves against the Markham Royals.
After Ben-Chaim Lalkin opened the scoring with his 48th of the year 2:31 into the contest, Wellington would respond en force with three markers. Mr. Barker, Ethan Quick and Will Mitchell all lit the lamp before the end of the first stanza.
Goals were harder to come by in the second and neither team would find the range until Ryan Schaap scored his 23rd with 40 seconds left in the period.
In the third, Wellington made it five straight goals when Corey Jewitt sniped his 27th just 16 seconds into the third, making it a 5-1 contest.
But the Royals weren’t done and made a game of it.
Mr. Lalkin scored his 49th of the year at 9:31 and then helped set up Ryan Forberg just 35 second later to make it a 5-3 game.
Mr. Mitchell’s second of the match at 14:49 restored Wellington’s three goal lead.
The Royals tallied with 59 seconds left to make it interesting but Logan Sitlani’s third goal of the year with 32 seconds left salted the game away for the hosts.
The following day in Collingwood, the Dukes got to see first hand why the Blues are the OJHL’s top team. The Blues were a buzzsaw, blanking the visitors 5-0 in a game that featured just about everything including a third period dust up, spearing penalties and bevy of 10 minute misconduct infractions. Everything but a Dukes goal.
Wellington is in Lindsay on Friday evening and then host the Fish on Sunday afternoon at 2:30.
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