A new year often means hitting the reset button, hoping for a fresh start when the clock hits midnight.
For the Oakville Blades, sadly, their fresh start began with two gruelling losses to the Leamington Flyers and the Trenton Golden Hawks.
In Oakville’s home game against Leamington, the game's story was the third period and the Blades' inability to kill penalties. After both teams scored goals in the first two periods, the third period started in a 2-2 tie.
Leamington opened the scoring with great play by goalscorer Alex Cunningham. Cunningham made a great move to get inside the slot area and roofed the puck over Gavin McCarthy’s shoulder.
But shortly after that goal, Oakville created a great passing play and Connor Thacker scored to tie the game. Then the wheels fell off the wagon real quick for Oakville.
The Blades started taking penalties, and 30 seconds into the penalty Alex Cunningham scored again for the Flyers to regain the lead 4-3. Then Oakville took another penalty and Cunnigham scored yet again on the powerplay to make the score 5-3.
The Blades were later given a powerplay of their own and Max Donhoe scored to bring the Blades back to within a goal, but shortly after the goal was scored the Blades took another penalty.
On the delayed penalty with the goalie out of the net and the extra skater on the ice, Leamington scored to put the game away and win 6-4. This is definitely a game that Oakville will look back on and remember as one filled with mistakes that cost them the game.
The next day the Blades played the Trenton Golden Hawks on the road and were not in the game for a single second.
Although at one point in the game, the Blades were only down 3-2, the Golden Hawks outperformed the Blades after that point and fired a total of 44 shots on goal and finished the game with nine goals in a 9-3 win.
If Oakville wants to get into the conversation of the OJHL's better teams, they need to clean up their special teams and stop making sloppy mistakes.
Their next game is an away match against the Brantford 99ers tomorrow, Thursday, Jan. 11.