The good news for the Wellington Dukes, aside from picking up two points Wednesday night by virtue of their 2-0 win over the visiting Haliburton Huskies, was that there were only 300 souls in Lehigh Arena to witness one of the sloppiest Jr. A hockey games in recent memory.

Wellington’s methods in downing the Pups were a dog’s breakfast. In 20 years of covering Jr. A hockey in the village, your humble scribe has never seen a contest littered with so many missed passes, over-skated pucks, and bad decisions.

That’s not to say the Dukes didn’t play physical. There was more hitting by the home town team in this game than any game in the previous two seasons. It’s a positive trend that’s been instilled by the Wellington coaching staff and physicality is netting results.

But the locals could not sustain any offensive zone pressure and the 10^th place visitors were more than happy to partake in a sloppy, choppy, fits and starts contest.

In fact, the Pups were very close to solving Wellington starter Royden Smith and scoring the game’s first goal. Halliburton had a prime scoring opportunity at the end of the second where the big 16-year-old Toronto product had to come across the goal line and make a clutch save with his left pad to keep the game scoreless.

Finally…

In the third, the first goal of the game was going to feel like it was worth five when it came. If it ever did.

Mercifully, the lamp was finally lit with under four minutes left.

Defender Kyle Grasby picked up the puck behind the Wellington net and lugged it thorugh the neutral zone, eventually gaining the Haliburton blue line on a three-on-three rush.

Mr. Gasby spotted Quinn McNamara on the far left side and the delivered the puck to the Arva, ON native.

Zach Mascard motored to the slot. Mr. McNamara was able to deliver the puck to the door step of the Haliburton crease.

With a deft set of hands, Mr. Mascard deflected the puck to the top glove side corner, past Huskies starter Carter Nadon with 3:57 left in the contest. The dam of disjointed hockey plays had finally burst.

The game seemed poised for a Halliburton mad scramble in the waning moments. Surely a bad bounce would befall Wellington, sending the game to overtime where the eyes of the 300 in attendance would fully glaze over. But it didn’t happen that way.

Haliburton took a tough penalty just after the Wellington goal and had to kill off two minutes of a Dukes man advantage. When the Huskies were finally able to lift Mr. Nadon for an extra attacker, they were out of skating steam and couldn’t mount much of test for Mr. Smith.

With 11 seconds left, Zach Carrier air mailed a volley from just inside the Wellington blue line that bulged the twine in Haliburton’s mesh mansion to make it a 2-0 final.

Back On Top

While Wellington bench boss Jacob Panetta and assistant Darcy Murphy won’t be framing the game as an winning exhibition of skill, the victory moved Wellington into a tie for first place in the OJHL’s East Conference. With a game in hand, no less.

Final shots were 17-10 in favour of Wellington. And those tallies are Enron-level generous.

The Dukes are back on the road this weekend, heading off to Newmarket on Saturday before playing in North York on Tuesday afternoon.

Wellington returns home on Wednesday to host the St. Mike’s Buzzers at 2:30 p.m. Yes, a mid-week, mid-day OJHL game at Lehigh Area. Woof.