Burlington Blaze Best Brampton Excelsiors In The Oven

Photo: Abbey Papineau /OJLL

One of the final teams to play their home opener, the defending Minto Cup champions Burlington Blaze returned to Central Arena Sunday winless on the season. Despite a resilient Brampton Excelsiors team who hung tough all night and put together a late run, the Blaze prevailed winning their first game of the season 12-10.       

Already tied 1-1, Brampton’s Bowie Horsman and the Blaze’s Alex Marinier each captialized on their opponents’ too many players penalties. With just under six minutes left in the first, Will MacLeod fired home his eighth of the season and giving Burlington a 3-2 lead.

Hayden Hiltz and Liam Luzza combined to stretch the lead to three, but the Excelsiors would eliminate that with a pair of goals from Jacob Janke and another Horsman power play marker. Burlington ran into penalty trouble late, but with a man in the box Cody Innes scored his first career regular season OJLL goal. Marinier closed out the second period scoring with three seconds left to put the Blaze up 7-5.

After finishing the second with a goal, Marinier opened the third completing his hat trick. Just 28 seconds after Burlington’s Jackson Foord’s first career OJLL goal, the Excelsiors’ Landon Jaeckle did the same. The goal would kick off a four-goal run to tie the game which included goals from Nolan Byrne, Nolan Marshall and Dante Bowen. With Gavin Thibeault restoring the lead, MacLeod added insurance with the man advantage and Nicholas Volkov potted an empty-netter to finally put the Blaze in the win column, 12-10.

Despite scoring just twice, Will MacLeod finished with 11 points (2+9). Alex Marinier (3+2) and Gavin Thibeault (2+2) were the other multi-goal scorers. Calum Leaver-Peryra made 45 saves for his first OJLL win.

Brampton was led offensively by the duo of Nolan Byrne (2+4) and Bowie Horsman (2+4). Jacob Janke scored twice with two assists, and Nolan Marshall (1+2) and Christopher Da Silva (1+2) each had three points.