It was a scrappy three periods of Pacific Junior Hockey League play that didn’t end in the Grandview Steelers’ favour.
The Steelers fell 5-2 to the Delta Ice Hawks on Sunday night (Oct. 5) at the Burnaby Winter Club.
The win puts the Hawks in a third-place tie with the Steelers in the competitive Tom Shaw conference.
A pass from forward Andreas Siagris to rookie Quinten Wideski got Delta on the board at about 12 minutes into the first period.
The Steelers rookie Connor Burk, who would eventually earn a third star of the game nod, found the back of the net with an assist from Braeden Gurney at 19:39 in the first.
(Grandview has 15 rookies on its roster, while the Hawks team has nine.)
The score was tied up 1-1 at the end of the first 20 minutes of play.
The only scoring in the second was by Delta rookie, 16-year-old Jake Fletcher, who later earned the second star of the game.
The Hawks outshot Grandview 22 to 10 by the end of the second, but Steelers goalie Cole MacInnes and good defensive play by Grandview helped keep the tally from rising higher for Delta.
Rather than scoring, the second period was dominated by rough play. Tyler Fraser of the Hawks and Grandview’s six-foot-five defenceman Lucas Mercer both received five minute fighting penalties as well as 10-minute game misconducts at 14:59 in the second. Over the game, there was a handful of roughing and misconduct penalties doled out to both sides.
Twenty-five seconds into the third period the Hawks’ Evan Grannary got the first of his three goals (and the first of his two unassisted) of the night.
It was 3-1 for the Hawks.
Grandview answered with a goal by rookie defenceman and winter club product Cameron Ginnetti, who was assisted by Timothy Chow and Jordan Hall.
A comeback was within reach for Grandview – it was 3-2 for Delta.
It didn’t take long for Delta to cool the fired-up Steelers. Just four seconds after Grandview scored, a fluky goal by Grannary from a center-ice faceoff put the Hawks ahead by two.
Grannary’s third in the third completed his hat trick and contributed to his first star of the game nod.
What had been a scrappy contest devolved into a bit of a typical grudge match with plenty of pushing and shoving on the ice and egging on from the stands.
Ugly or not, it was a 5-3 finish.
The Steelers, and the Hawks, now have a 5-3-0 record.
Steelers next take on the Wolf Pack Saturday (Oct. 11) at Harry Jerome Recreation Centre in North Vancouver. The puck drops at 7 p.m.
