Submitted by Rob Duncan. The Saugeen Maitland Midget AA Lightning had a short break for the holidays, travelling to Mississauga for the Christmas Classic Tournament December 27-29 and coming home with the bronze medal. The Lightning opened the tournament with a 3-1 win over the host Mississauga Chiefs. Miranda Lantz scored two goals and Tori Terpstra added a single. Ashlee Lawrence earned two assists while Jordyn Sholdice and Dawn Pletsch each added helpers in the game. In their second round robin game, the Bolts downed the Willowdale Red Wings 3-0 with Shea Tiley earning the shut-out in net. Kelly Gribbons opened the scoring, assisted by Terpstra.
Courtney Surridge then scored on a beauty 3-way passing play from linemates Cassidy Colhoun and Lexi Smith. Gribbons closed out the scoring with assists going to Maddie Duncan and Terpstra. The Lightning closed out their round robin with a 2-1 victory over the Milwaukee Junior Admirals earning them first place in their pool and a spot in the ¼ finals. Lawrence scored from Lantz and Smith notched the winner, deking out two Milwaukee defenders before depositing the puck in the top corner of the net. Colhoun and Surridge earned assists on the winning goal. The Lightning faced the Haldimand River Cats in their ¼ final match on Friday
evening and defeated them 3-1. The hard work of the grind line paid off as
Lawrence scored the opener with assists going to Pletsch and Lantz.
Terpstra
scored a pair, one on a break-away from Smith and one on a pass from Gribbons
on her knees from behind the net. That placed the Bolts into a semi-final
match against the Oakville Hornets, two teams the odds-makers would have
placed in the tournament final instead of facing in the semi. All shots
through regulation and a 5 minute overtime period were turned aside by
goaltender Morgan Baker and the Oakville netminder, requiring the game to go
to a shoot-out at 0-0. Unfortunately, the Hornets prevailed in the
shoot-out, sending the Lightning to the Bronze medal game against
the Brantford Ice Cats. The loss to the Hornets and the six game
weekend appeared to take the wind out of the Lightning sails and the Bronze
medal game also ended scoreless after 3 periods and overtime. This time
the Lightning prevailed, with Lantz scoring on her shoot-out attempt.
Shea Tiley was solid, stopping all shots in the game and all three
Brantford shoot-out attempts. The Bolts thank the two call-ups from the
Bantam AA team, Nikki Zabel and Neve VanPelt who played well all weekend.
Follow the Lightning results at
www.saugeenmaitlandlightning.com.