The Summerside Western Capitals got their lick back on the Truro Bearcats in the Centennial Cup Quarterfinal with a 3-1 victory. This was the sixteenth matchup between the teams this season including 8 regular season, a thrilling 7 game series as well as this quarterfinal.
PEI native, Ryder Howatt opened the scoring late in the first before Eric Halliday’s seeing eye point shot beat Kolton Bourret to tie the game at 1 heading to the third period. As it was all season long, the teams were evenly matched all throughout but it was Howatt again with the eventual game winner 50 seconds into the third. The Bearcats pressed for the equalizer but Summerside didn’t budge and Alexandre Guy would seal the game with an empty netter in the final minute to send the Caps to the semifinal.
Louca Connolly stopped 21 shots as he proved himself to be one of the top goaltenders in the tournament with his performance through the week. Kolton Bourret stooped 16 of 17 for the win.
Head Coach, Jon Greenwood had this to say post game ““I said to [Summerside head coach] Billy [McGuigan] when we shook hands, ‘If we play 100 times it would be 50-50.’ We’re two evenly matched teams and they got the better of us tonight. We ran out of a little bit of juice and I could tell that as the game went on, but that’s ok, that’s hockey. It’s been a long season, it’s game 74 for our team tonight, so it’s only human nature they’re going to run out of juice at some point and I just thought we didn’t have the legs tonight. I’m going to remember this season with pride. I told our guys that tonight stings and it sucks, but I told them after the game they should wake up tomorrow with a smile at what they accomplished this year. They made the whole town of Truro proud with their efforts this year and we came here and lasted to the last six teams in the country. There’s nothing to be ashamed of and I’m always going to look back at this group and smile.”
Summerside will move on to play Longueuil in the semifinal while Toronto will play Niverville in the other.
For 6 Bearcats, it was their final junior hockey game. We wish Liam Welsh, Jake Todd, Julien Roy, Matthew Bolduc, Eli Baillargeon and Samuel Vachon all the best. Forever Bearcats, forever champions.