The Aurora Tigers dropped a pair of hard-fought home games on the weekend. 

On Friday night, the Tigers fell behind 4-0 to high-flying Haliburton after one period, but kept the 10-3-0-0 Huskies off the scoresheet the rest of the way in a 4-1 loss at the ACC. 

Aurora forward Kyle Baston scored his fifth of the season at 2:33 of the third period when he banged in a rebound past OHL-bound Huskies goaltender Carter Nadon.

The veteran Tiger described the goal that beat the North Bay Battalion draft pick and pulled the Tigers to within three of the second-place Huskies.

“It was off the draw we won. I put it through the five-hole and it gave the team a boost.  I thought we responded well after a rough first period.  We came out more competitive in the second and third and made it a game.” 

Baston commented on the improved play of the Tigers in their last six games in which they have gone 3-2-0-1.

“Everything is coming together better and we've made adjustments. Our guys are sticking to their roles and we've been practicing really hard.  We were in so many of our games at the beginning of the road trip, but couldn't get a win or a break.  We've been keeping it simple and working all three periods to improve as a team.”

Two former Tigers haunted their old team on Friday night. Defenseman Carson Littlejohn scored the game-winning goal on a laser from the point on a power play at 12:57. Power forward Tyler Oletic took a pass from Deandres DeJesus and fired a wrist shot from the slot past Aurora netminder Christopher Thompson for the Huskies' fourth goal with 1:09 left in the first period.

Ty Petrou—with his sixth and seventh goals of the campaign—rounded out Haliburton's impressive offensive outburst in the first twenty minutes of play.

In Saturday night's 4-2 narrow loss to Markham NCAA D1 commit Andreas Mikrogiannakis scored his team-leading seventh of the season against the Waxers.

Tigers' forward Parker Bisignore opened the scoring at 7:55 of the first period, but Markham scored three consecutive goals to hold a 3-1 lead at 5:07 of the final frame.  Mikrogiannakis's marker at 5:56—on Matthew Johnson's second assist of the game—pulled the Tigers to within one.  However, Owen Ferguson's power play goal for the Waxers with 1:18 left in the contest provided the margin of victory for Markham (2-10-0-1).

The Tigers (3-7-0-1) host the Toronto Patriots (9-3-0-0) at 7:30 PM on Friday, October 18 at the ACC.

By Jim Stewart