Lowell-Caledonia 5 West Ottawa 2

Lowell-Caledonia moves to the top of the OK-3 with a convincing 5-2 win over West Ottawa. Lots of hitting in this one. A ton of hitting. I was walking behind the L/C bench and there was literally a pool of blood and water on the ground. At one point, I heard Drake Chittenden tell the L/C trainer: "This is the first bloody nose I've ever had." He got his money's worth because it was a gusher, and he had to go back on the ice with a piece of cotton stuffed in his left nostril.

I should have suspected there would be some physical play tonight when West Ottawa's Bryan Devries (pictured here) stood for the national anthem in black glasses with tape, looking like one of the Hanson Brothers. I can't say for sure if Devries had the foil on, but he certainly did play some old-time hockey, as did most every player on the ice tonight.

The game actually got off to a fast start with no one was hitting anyone. Lowell-Caledonia totally dominated play for the first minute, skating around the Panthers' zone and peppering West Ottawa goalie Cody Skinner with several shots. Then suddenly, West Ottawa's Jed Grooters was flying into the L/C zone and stuffing the puck past goalie Corey Phillips to put the Panthers up 1-0 just 1:15 into the contest. L/C went back to work, and tied it 3 minutes later on a blast from the blueline by junior Brent Steele, whose celebration consisted of giving mad props to his TPS (as pictured above).

From that point on, the hitting picked up, but it must be said that it was of the clean, hard and nasty variety. Aside from one penalty for roughing, the remainder of the first period was penalty free until West Ottawa's Noah Mihos was sent off for tripping at the 14:39 mark. Bad move. L/C's Jordan Steger scored on the PP with just 2.7 ticks left in the period on a beautiful feed from Bo Adams. The pair would also hook up early in the second to net another PP goal to put L/C up 3-1. The hitting continued in the second, and there was not much room on the ice until late in the period. L/C got the backbreaker with 1:23 left in period 2 when the gauzed and bloodied Chittenden skated in and beat Skinner with shot that richoted in off the cross bar. Ken Hayes would add one in the third for Lowell-Caledonia and Kevin Holt got one late for West Ottawa.

Shots were 37-28 in favor of L/C. Lowell-Caledonia netminder Phillips gets the win, which moves L/C into sole possession of first place in the OK Conference's Tier 3. A very entertaining game, and maybe the best two periods of hitting that I've seen all year. Pix and scoresheet are below.