Muskies still winless at OFSAA

The Muskie boys’ hockey team suffered a 4-2 loss to the Uxbridge Tigers late this morning in Emo to sit with a 0-1-1 record at the all-Ontario boys’ hockey championship.
Brian White, assisted by Matt Redford and Tyler Miller, had drawn the black-and-gold within one with 1:30 to go in regulation time, but the 13th-ranked Tigers sealed the deal with an empty-net goal in the dying seconds.
The Tigers led 1-0 after one before Ryan Witherspoon tied the game in the second with an unassisted tally.
After Uxbridge went up 2-1, they got a fluke goal in the third when Muskie goalie Richard Wieringa mishandled the puck.
Muskie fans packed into the Ice for Kids Arena here yesterday morning thought their team had a guaranteed win. But the Birchmount Park Panthers scored two goals in the final 22 seconds to salvage a 9-9 tie.
The fans who weren’t impressed with the five-minute major for kneeing handed to Brock Benjamin late in the third period, which basically left the Muskies short-handed for the rest of the game.
“We killed ourselves,” Muskie head coach Shane Bliss said. “We took some bad penalties but there were some bad calls made, as well. I’m not very happy with the officiating.
“I’m not very happy with how we played, either,” he added.
Benjamin said the team really needs to tighten up their end in order to be more successful in the all-Ontarios.
“We made classic mistakes,” he said. “We brought a lot energy though.”
With regards to the five-minute major and subsequent game misconduct, Benjamin said: “I don’t even know what to say about that. Just a bad call, I guess.”
The teams were tied at 3-3 after the first period, with the Muskies getting goals from White (two) and Miller.
Birchmount—ranked fourth—jumped ahead 5-3 in the first half of the second before Miller netted his second of the game with nine minutes left in the period to pull the black-and-gold within one.
The Panthers regained their two-goal lead at 6:34 of the second, but Brett Meyers made it 6-5 just over a minute later.
After Wieringa replaced David Moen in goal, the 12th-ranked Muskies were hoping for a better final period.
It was the Panthers who scored first, getting a power-play goal just a few seconds into the third.
But Fort High quickly stormed back. Meyers notched his second of the game at 13:42, then White scored his third and fourth goals within a 16-second span to give Fort High a 8-7 lead.
Miller completed his hat trick with two minutes to play to make the score 9-7.
But the Muskies could not hold the lead, allowing two goals over the final 20-plus seconds to make for the wild finish.
The Muskies are back in action today at 6 p.m. at the Ice for Kids Arena against 20th-ranked St. Matthew, the close out Pool ‘D’ play tomorrow at noon here versus fifth-ranked Michael Power.
Only the top two teams in each pool advance to the quarter-finals tomorrow night.