{"id":19689,"date":"2018-02-01T11:58:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T16:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19689"},"modified":"2018-02-08T11:11:48","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T16:11:48","slug":"tigers-lead-extended-atop-north-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/tigers-lead-extended-atop-north-division\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers\u2019 lead extended atop North division"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Look out Dukes, the Tigers are on the prowl.<br \/>\nA battle of the behemoths on Friday night saw the junior A Aurora Tigers take down the Wellington Dukes, bringing Aurora within two points of the conference lead.<br \/>\nDespite a 5 \u2013 1 loss to Cobourg on Monday snapping their sixteen-game point streak, the cats rallied back on the road with a 4 \u2013 3 victory against the Dukes, the top team in the NorthEast conference.<br \/>\nThe rubber match of the season was opened with a Wellington powerplay goal just under the midway point of the first period, a score the teams took into the intermission.<br \/>\nBack-to-back Aurora goals in the second gave the Tigers the lead, thanks to Elijah Gonsalves and Anthony Romano, before Wellington bounced back with a pair of their own early in the third.<br \/>\nRivzan Mansurov tied it back up with just under ten minutes to go at three apiece, before captain Jake Bricknell earned the game winner on the late powerplay.<br \/>\nJack Irvine, called up to replace the suspended Bradley Van Schubert between the pipes, made a solid 33 saves in the win.<br \/>\nVan Schubert returned to the net one day later in a battle with the Buffalo Jr. Sabres, the Sabres only visit to Aurora on the season schedule.<br \/>\nTested early on a two-on-one, he showed no signs of rust in making a diving cross-crease save, though Buffalo opened the scoring in the second after a few whacks at a rebound.<br \/>\nAurora tied it up on a rebound of their own just a few minutes later, with the goal going to Luca Esposito, though Buffalo took a 2 \u2013 1 lead to the dressing room after a quick win of the draw fooled Van Schubert.<br \/>\nWith time winding down and an empty net, Austin Eastman found twine with just four seconds left on the clock to send the game to overtime.<br \/>\nThree-on-three hockey tested Van Schubert on another two-on-one in extra time, making another diving stop, before Joseph Mizzi buried the game winner for Aurora from the side of the net.<br \/>\nThe division rival Newmarket Hurricanes, who spent most of the season atop the North division, dropped both of their weekend games to fall four points back of the streaking Tigers.<br \/>\nThe two sides will meet twice more in the regular season schedule, in Newmarket on February 8 and at the Aurora Community Centre on February 16.<br \/>\nIn the meantime, Aurora kicks off a three game road trip on Thursday, visiting the Oakville Rangers (30-12-2-1), before ending the week with a trip to Markham to face the Royals (23-17-1-4) on Sunday evening.<br \/>\nFor stats, schedules, and more information, visit www.auroratigers.pointstreaksites.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Look out Dukes, the Tigers are on the prowl.<br \/>\nA battle of the behemoths on Friday night&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/2018-02-01-06.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}