Blades blank Wallaceburg Clinch 4th place

It wasn’t the best game the Blenheim Blades have played this
season, but the 3-0 shutout victory over the Wallaceburg
Thunderhawks before 572 fans Sunday night at the Blenheim arena
clinched a fourth-place finish for the team in the PJHL’s Stobbs
Division.
With one regular season game left to play – Wednesday in
Mooretown against the fifth-place finishing Flags at 7:30 – the Blades
are sitting with 23 wins, 14 losses, four overtime defeats and 50
points, seven up on the Flags who have just three games left to play.
The Blades and Flags will meet in a best-of-seven Stobbs Division
quarter-final series starting Thursday, March 9 at 7 p.m. at the
Blenheim arena. Game 2 will be in Mooretown Saturday, March 11 at
7:30, with Game 3 back in Blenheim Sunday, March 12 at 7. Game 4 in
Mooretown Wednesday, March 15 at 7:30.
Blenheim netminder Owen Lemieux picked up his second shutout of
the season as he stopped all 28 Wallaceburg shots, and lowered his
goals-against average to 2.65. He also kept his shutout alive by
stopping a penalty shot by Wallaceburg’s Cohen Veenstra at the end
of the second period.
Lemieux’s teammates fired 54 shots at Wallaceburg netminder Mitch
Rawlings.
Scoring was at a minimum as the Blades got two second-period
goals from Austin Drew and Noah Prudhomme, and an empty net
marker from Daniel Norton, but there more than enough penalties to
keep the fans attention on the game as the Blades were assessed 40
minutes on 19 infractions and Wallaceburg 38 on 14.

There were two fights in the game with Blades defenseman Owen
Reeve battling Wallaceburg’s Xavier Gelinas, and Blenheim’s Ayden
McKinlay taking on the Thunderhawks Aiden Rigby.
As for the goals Drew’s was his ninth of the season assisted by
McKinlay and Evan Wells, with Prudhomme’s being his 14th with
helpers going to Connor Wright and Tate Bowden, and an assist on
Norton’s seventh of the season going to Bowden.

BLADES BITS: Prior to the game Blenheim’s three overage players –
Wright, Ben Barnard and Wells – were honoured as they dropped
ceremonial pucks between Bowden and Wallaceburg’s Josh Remsik
with their parents on the ice looking on…Besides being Overage
Players Night it was also Chatham AAA Cyclones Night with Cyclone
players getting in for free…The 50/50 was $387.50, the highest of the
season…It was the sixth time the total has been over $300 this
year…The three stars of the game were Lemieux, Wallaceburg
netminder Rawlings, and for his game-long hard work, Blades forward
Zach Van Boxtel…The ice time sponsors were Matt Foulis of Sun Life
Insurance of Blenheim and Bob Pickering of BrokerLink Insurance of
Blenheim.