Colts in the groove
Posted By IAN SHANTZ
Posted 2 months ago
Someone threw a record on the ice when the Barrie Colts broke a franchise record for consecutive wins last Saturday.
It was some old KC and the Sunshine Band vinyl.
Well, a week has passed and the Colts are still singingThat's The Way I Like It.
The latest toGet Down Tonight were Owen Sound, Mississauga and Sudbury, teams the Colts beat in a three-in-a-row set that wrapped up Saturday night in Barrie.
Spin it anyway you'd like. But right now, this team -- which beat the Wolves, 4-3, in a shootout for its 14th in a row in front of a hard-partying crowd of 4,035 at the Barrie Molson Centre -- is a massive hit.
That's probably beginning to sound like -- pardon the pun -- a bit of a broken record.
"We got it done," said Colts overage forward Luke Pither, who scored his team-leading 20th of the season on Saturday.
"It got a little scary there for a bit, but we pulled through in the end," added fellow overage forward Bryan Cameron, who danced in and beat Phelpston native Andrew Loverock to give Barrie the shootout win when nobody else could score on Loverock or Barrie keeper Peter Di Salvo.
Di Salvo made 21 saves and five straight in the shootout, while Loverock stopped 48 shots and four in the breakaway contest.
Alas,I'm Your Boogie Man, proclaimed Cameron, who also tallied in regulation for a Colts team that put its streak in jeopardy when it went into the third period trailing 2-1.
As a kind of pre-game ritual throughout the winning run, prior to puck-drop, Pither and Cameron have been strategically kicking a ball down the hallway and past the coach's office at the BMC.
On Saturday, the ball wound up getting stuck in the rafters.
"We were a little worried after that happened," Pither said.
"I kicked one a little high and we lost the ball," Cameron said following the electrifying win. "We still have to get it back. Better go find out where it is."
Pither and Cameron probably didn't leave the ball at the barber shop. As part of Movember -- a prostate cancer fundraiser held throughout November -- the forwards have been growing moustaches.
While November ends tomorrow, the forwards might want to keep rocking their growth considering that Barrie went 10-0 in the month.
"My billet's got a hair salon. She put a little colour in, just to spice it up," said Pither, who plans to keep his multi-coloured face fashion a little while longer.
"I think I'm going to buzz mine off," said Cameron, as his teammate pleaded with him to think it over.
Following a reasonably solid performance Thursday against Owen Sound and Friday's big-game road win over co-heavyweight Mississauga on the strength of backup Dalton McGrath, the Sudbury game -- perhaps predictably, given the grueling schedule -- wasn't pretty.
The home team was sluggish at times and took a few selfish penalties -- the most costly being Alex Hutchings' roughing minor which led to Marcus Foligno scoring the equalizer for the Wolves in the third.
But the Colts hold a three-point lead on Mississauga atop the conference and sit six back of the nation's top-ranked team, the Windsor Spitfires. So teams of Barrie's calibre don't always need their best effort.
Just timely performances.
"We bogged down a little bit ... but, again, they persevered through and got the win," Barrie head coach Marty Williamson said. "We found a way to win it. Everybody's stepping up at different times."
Hutchings added his 14th of the campaign, while Chris VanLaren and John McFarland had Sudbury's other goals.
The Colts play another three-in-three set this week, beginning at home to Niagara on Thursday and winding south of the border to Erie before finishing up against the IceDogs in St. Catharines on Saturday.
It can only mean there'll be a whole lot more(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Bootyahead.
ishantz@thebarrieexaminer.com
