Cats kick off the new year with a pair of wins!!

The Northview Wildcat hockey team capped off a “normal” week of practice with a pair of solid wins over the Dayton Stealth and Perrysburg Yellow Jackets this past weekend to even their overall record at 5-5-3 and 1-1 in league play.

On Saturday evening the Cats finally got to play a local game after being away from the Toledo area since a November 29th game at the Cold Turkey Thanksgiving showcase. An upstart and undefeated 28-0-1 Dayton Stealth team came to Toledo with plenty of confidence and talent to play spoiler for the new year. Northview trailed 1-0 before Benny Seals connected off a feed from David Crandall on the Power play to tie it at 1. Senior Dougie Carter also picked up a helper. The Stealth connected on a power play of their own during a 5 minute major to regain the lead in the 2nd period. The Cats scored the equalizer in the 3rd as junior Josh Bisson took a feed from linemate Camren Horvath before deeking the goalie for a pretty goal. Carter picked up a 2nd assist of the game. The game remained tied after 45 minutes of play and headed to overtime. In the OT Horvath gave the Stealth their 1st loss of the season just minutes in as he connected off a pass from Crandall and Sophomore Riley Ames to give the Cats a much needed victory to kick off the 2nd half of the season 3-2! Sophomore Goaltender Austin Nowak made 21 saves to pick up the win in net.

15 hours later the Cats dropped the puck down in BG for a league game with the Perrysburg Yellow Jackets. Though they were outplayed for much of the 1st part of the game the forward unit of Horvath, Bisson and Sophomore Trystan Harrell picked up the slack. The trio combined for 3 goals and 5 assist overall and staked the Cats to a 2-1 lead after one on a pair of goals from Harrell. Perrysburg tied it in the 2nd and the teams headed to the 3rd at 2 a piece. Horvath’s shorthanded effort from Bisson gave the Cats the lead but the Yellow Jackets tied it back up. Carter tipped home a PP goal minutes later but once again the Jackets tied it at 4. However, the Cats would not be denied as their 5th lead of the game finally stood up against the pesky Jackets in a 6 to 4 win. Benny Seals found a loose puck to the side of the net off the strong work of Junior Noah Chevalier and Crandall for the eventual game winner. Junior Tucker Ludwig finished of the scoring just over a minute laster to cap off the win with his career 1st. Senior Tyler Clem made some key saves as part of a 20 save effort to preserve the win in net.

Northview will return to Tam-o-Shanter for a pair of games this upcoming weekend before a matinee game on MLK day down in BGSU against the Bobcats of Bowling Green. Friday’s game vs SJJ is set for 7:30 on rink 1 and Saturday’s game with Moeller is at 6:30 on rink 2. Fridays game vs St. Johns will have an allotted 100 general admission tickets that will go on sale Friday morning on the Sylvania Tam-o-Shanter website https://sylvaniatamoshanter.com/purchase-tickets-online. These tickets are not password protected and on a 1st come 1st serve basis starting at 10:00 AM.

Good Luck Cats!!!