Dominant Night For Willem Firth And Toronto Beaches

PHOTO: SAM HOSSACK

Even with a short bench, the Toronto Beaches offense was too much for Kitchener-Waterloo in Pickering Thursday night. The 19-5 win was the third straight home victory for the Beaches, and had an impact on the OJLL points leaderboard.

Willem Firth, who finished second in points last season, winning league MVP, had his third 10 point night (3 goals, 7 assists) and sixth hat trick of the season (in his ninth game). He is now just seven points behind Mimico’s Finn Thomson who holds top spot.

Second place, however, now belongs to Greg Palmer who had six points (1 goal, 5 assists). Lost in the star performances of others is the season of Matt Collison. On Thursday he scored his second sock-trick of the season (6 goals, 3 assists), and has scored multiple goals in every game so far this season. He’s now second in the league in goals with 24, four behind Firth.

After KW’s Zane Dalpe opened the scoring, Collison put up a hat trick in the first period alone. Coming off the first pointless game of his career, Peyton Booth matched his career high with six points (3 goals, 3 assists), kicking of his first career hat trick in the first where Toronto led 4-1.

Collison and Booth put a run together in the second as well, helped by the first OJLL goal from Eoin MacKay, who would drop the gloves later in the game. Nearing the end of the period Kitchener did get two back from Dalpe and Lowen Martin, but the Beaches were up 10-2.

Dalpe completed his second hat trick of the season, but it preceded a nine-goal run to end the game for Toronto. In the run Firth had six of his ten points, and Leo Hoffman scored the first two goals of his OJLL career helping make the final 19-5 for Toronto.

After back-to-back losses Andrew Kidd rebounded with a 44 save win. All told, nine different Beaches players scored goals (to just two from KW), and every Toronto runner but one registered a point - even Kidd had an assist.

No time to dwell on the loss for Kitchener-Waterloo though; they’ll have a home game against the Burlington Blaze (6-4) Friday night. And the task gets tougher for Toronto, travelling to Tony Rose on Sunday to face the unbeaten Orangville Northmen (10-0).