By Jeff Gard/Today’s Northumberland
In front of nearly 1,100 spectators, the Cobourg Cougars completed a two-game sweep of the Wellington Dukes in the Ontario Junior Hockey League East Division semifinal playoff series Monday night at the Cobourg Community Centre.
Defenceman Adam Barone opened the scoring 52 seconds into the second period and forward Justin Jamer added an empty net goal with just 31 seconds left in regulation time in a 2-0 win for the Cougars in Game 2 of the best-of-three series.
Goaltender Justin Easter made 28 saves for the shutout, but credited the team effort in front of him for the victory. That was also the case in a 3-2 win for the Cougars on Sunday night in Wellington.
“I think we just played the right way the whole series,” Easter said. “Earlier on in the year when I got traded here and a bunch of other guys were coming in, we were just starting to build the culture in the room and I think right now it’s all clicking. We all believe in ourselves and we think we’re one of the best teams here.”
Limiting the Dukes to two goals was no easy feat, but Easter said it was certainly a reflection of the play of his teammates at both ends of the ice.
“Obviously their first line of Pierce, Vreugdenhil and Campbell are really good players and they put a lot of pucks in the net, especially Pierce,” he remarked. “Kudos to them, but I think we did a great job just shutting them down and taking care of it.”
Cobourg has been one of the best teams since OJHL clubs returned in February from a shutdown from Christmas through to the end of January. Now the Cougars, which placed fourth in the division standings during the regular season, are the first team to advance in the Buckland Cup playoffs while knocking out the top team in the East in the process.
“A lot of credit to their team. They had a tremendous season…a lot of offensive prowess on that team,” Cougars head coach Wes Wolfe said of the Dukes. “It’s full credit to the effort that our players put in on the defensive side of the puck. I think that’s something that I was most proud of. We obviously scored a lot of goals this year, but keeping them out of our net was something we placed a high priority on down the stretch so you could see that they were really committed to playing the right way.”
Despite not being the team facing elimination, the Cougars played with more urgency as they looked to close out the series. They got pucks on net, including a 12-5 shots advantage in the third period and 39-28 overall, won battles for loose pucks and got in front of a lot of would-be Wellington shots.
That was certainly by design.
“Before the game we talked about the fact that we didn’t want to rise to the challenge, we wanted to fall to the level of our preparation,” Wolfe said. “We felt very strong in our game plan and the guys came out and fought with a little nervous energy in the first few minutes, but we quickly found what we needed to do and we were very confident throughout the night. I was really happy with how the team played.”
While the Cougars weren’t looking past Monday night’s contest, they showed they weren’t eager to make another trip to Wellington for a third-and-deciding contest. Winning the opening game on the road was key.
“The Wellington building is a tough building to play in with all the fans and everything like that so it was really big for us, got the momentum swinging our way and really got us believing in ourselves and who doesn’t want to play in this building (the CCC) right?” Easter said. “It’s so electric in here so we were super glad to close it out here.”
The announced attendance was 1,080 for the Cougars’ first playoff series victory since 2018.
“We’re really happy to do it for them,” Easter said of the Cougars fans. “Everyone here is so grateful. We think this is the best place to play in the league. The town’s amazing, all the billets are amazing and it’s just a phenomenal place to play. The coaches, organization, everyone’s there for you when you need them and we wanted to do it for them too so it was great.”
Cobourg will meet either the Trenton Golden Hawks or Haliburton County Huskies in the East Division final, which will also be a best-of-three series. The Golden Hawks lead 1-0 heading into Game 2 on Wednesday night in Minden.
Photo Ed McPherson/OJHL Images
