{"id":25679,"date":"2020-01-16T17:57:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T22:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25679"},"modified":"2020-01-16T17:57:21","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T22:57:21","slug":"aurora-tigers-learn-valuable-lessons-through-a-tough-three-game-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-tigers-learn-valuable-lessons-through-a-tough-three-game-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Tigers learn valuable lessons through a tough three-game week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Aurora Tigers faced a tough weekend on the ice with\nabounding games from Friday through Sunday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who needs to sleep? Three days of hockey. Bodies being\npowered by pure adrenaline from start to finish and aching muscles await the\nAurora Tigers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite dropping all of their games this week, the Tigers\nlearned lessons at the beginning of 2020 that will last the players, for as\nlong as they play the sport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, the Tigers welcomed the Buffalo Jr. Sabres\nfrom south of the border. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last time the Tigers and the Sabres squared off was\nin Buffalo, NY, when the Sabres defeated the Tigers 7-4 at the HarborCenter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first period in this one, the Tigers began the\ngame on the power play after the Sabres brought the heat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good puck movement on the power play resulted in a few\ngood chances to get on the score sheet, if it was not for the heroics of goaltender\nChase Clark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 8:48 in the first period, a lead pass from Seth Benson\nfound Sabres forward Nolan Gorecki in all alone. The forward made no mistake to\ngive the Sabres a 1-0 lead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tigers continued pushing, dumping the puck deep. The\nonly problem was the amount of shots on goal. The team recorded five in each of\nthe first two periods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tigers went on the power play close to the end of the\nperiod and a bad mistake in the neutral zone occurred. Captain Alec Cicero corralled\nthe puck and charged in on goal on the breakaway to give the Sabres a 2-0 lead\nheading into intermission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the second period, the Sabres scored\na third breakaway goal thanks to Nate Berke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With frustrations looming on the bench, tensions\nbeginning to rise, the Tigers and the Sabres played the rest of the second\nperiod, plagued with fighting majors and roughing penalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tigers forward Kaleb Nelson was ejected from the game for\nfighting Seth Benson who instigated the conflict. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabres head coach Nick Tuzzolino got involved in the\nclamour, clearly aggravated on the bench with a few calls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start of the third period, the Tigers fell into\nbig trouble with two penalties. As a result, on the five on three, Colby Seitz\nfinished his chance in close. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethan Louisos in the latter half of the period, added a\nfifth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Head Coach Jim Wells Jr. explained his thoughts on Friday\nnight\u2019s loss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoor performance, got to take that back on to myself,\u201d\nsaid Wells. \u201cObviously, they were not prepared. We thought we practiced well\nall week, but obviously they weren\u2019t prepared, they were not in the right mental\nstate. No excuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re asking of this hockey club after trade\ndeadline is we compete, work as hard as we can and play smart. We didn\u2019t do\nthat tonight. We did in spurts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, this the first time the Tigers had an\nissue with breakaways according to Wells Jr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In preparation for the next game the night after at home\nagain, the Tigers hosted the Pickering Panthers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a good first period shots-wise with 11, the\nTigers fell 4-0 down immediately and could not recover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boys played an excellent third period scoring three\ntimes thanks to Luc Reeve with two goals and Sebastian Tamburro with one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a short rest, the Sunday game came on the road in\nMarkham against the Royals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first period, Ryan Rosborough opened the scoring.\nThe Aurora Tigers did not score in the first period for a sixth consecutive\ngame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club has scored at least one goal in the first period\n17 times in 41 games played thus far this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second period, Kevin Weaver-Vitale made it 2-0.\nThe resilient group played their game and stuck with the plan. Eventually, Luc\nReeve put the Tigers within one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four minutes into the third period, Liam Loftus tied the\ngame at 2-2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimistic and working hard, the Tigers ran into a brick\nwall, coughing up two goals and an eventual empty net goal to fall 5-2 on the\nroad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This upcoming weekend will hopefully be the weekend the\nAurora Tigers welcome back Matt King and Steven Li to the lineup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wells expects King and Li to have an instant impact in\ntheir return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBoth those guys will bring a lot of energy. They will\nalso give us depth and a lot of energy. That is something we have been\nstruggling with right now. We\u2019ve been running a short bench.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wells vows to change the compete level from the team each\nand every night, beginning with how the coaching staff prepares the players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is a man of his word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Tigers host the Collingwood Colts this Friday at the Aurora Community Centre. Puck drop is at 7:30 p.m. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Belardi <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Tigers faced a tough weekend on the ice with abounding games from Friday through Sunday. Who needs to sleep? Three days of hockey. Bodies being powered by pure adrenaline from start to finish and aching muscles await the Aurora Tigers. Despite dropping all of their games this week, the Tigers learned lessons at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25668,"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":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020-01-16-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Gb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-12 06:11:41","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\/25679","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=25679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}