{"id":24729,"date":"2019-09-20T17:37:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T21:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24729"},"modified":"2019-09-27T15:36:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T19:36:27","slug":"tigers-declawed-by-admirals-in-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/tigers-declawed-by-admirals-in-season-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers declawed by Admirals in season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roar of the Junior A Aurora Tigers\nwas little more than a whimper on opening weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club opened up the Ontario Junior\nHockey League season with a pair of losses at the hands of the Brampton\nAdmirals and Markham Royals, creating an early gap between the Tigers and their\nNorth division rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnfortunately we didn\u2019t get the results\nwe were looking for this weekend,\u201d said Tigers General Manager and Head Coach\nRob De Fulviis. \u201cThe positives definitely outweigh the negatives though.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was actually Aurora who opened up the\nscoring in last Thursday\u2019s home opener, much to the delight of the close to 400\nfans in attendance at the Aurora Community Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newcomer Kaleb Nelson potted his first\ncareer junior league goal at just the age of sixteen, redirected a low shot\nfrom in the slot to fool Brampton goalkeeper Sean Wu. Brampton\u2019s Dakota Zarundy\nresponded by beating Aurora veteran Christian Filippetti on a weak wrister a\nfew minutes later, before Aurora\u2019s Jonatahn Balah and Brampton\u2019s Christos Rodis\nadded their own tallies to take a 2 \u2013 2 tie into the first intermission, when\nfans lined up for autographs from Storage Wars Canada star Ursula Stolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noah Minns added a powerplay marker for the\nTigers in the second period, but it would be the last time on the board for\nAurora in what eventually was a 5 \u2013 3 finish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a familiar foe in Markham on\nSunday afternoon to face the Royals, where the Tigers controlled the play\nthrough the first two periods by taking a 2 \u2013 0 lead thanks to goals from\nNelson and Balah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet it was in the third period where the\nRoyals offense exploded, beating Filippetti six times in the final frame to\nwalk away with a 6 \u2013 2 victory. Markham\u2019s Vincent Bonaiuto, who earned a hat\ntrick in just about a fourteen-minute span, took home the game\u2019s first star and\nleft the Tigers without a point yet this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the lack of early success, Di\nFulviis isn\u2019t worried about his young and inexperienced squad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think our biggest concern, is\nlearning how to play a full 60-minute hockey game right now,\u201d said De Fulviis.\n\u201cBack-to-back games, we lost the game in the third period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith 18 new players in the line-up, and\nmany of them getting their first taste of the OJHL, it is a different league\nthan many of the junior leagues across Canada. We are young, we are fast, we\nplay with grit and lots of heart. I\u2019m just very excited to see where this group\nof guys will be in the next few months.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Royals have jumped out of the gate as\nthe early frontrunners in the OJHL\u2019s North division, going 2-0-0 to start with\na clean four points in the standings. Newcomers Collingwood Colts, who replaced\nthe relocated Newmarket Hurricanes in the division, are tied at the top in\nwinning two of their first three games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora, the Stouffville Spirit, and the\nPickering Panthers are all at goose eggs after both Stouffville and Pickering\nlost all three of their games in the opening week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One team will be breaking their losing\nstreak on Friday, when the Tigers host the Spirit at the Aurora Community\nCentre for a puck drop at 7:30 p.m. A long, six-game road trip follows on the\nschedule, before the Tigers return home on Oct. 5 to host the St. Michael\u2019s\nMajors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For stats, schedules, and more\ninformation, visit www.auroratigers.pointstreaksites.com. <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The roar of the Junior A Aurora Tigers was little more than a whimper on opening weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/2019-09-19-22.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6qR","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 12:14:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24729","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=24729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}