{"id":32924,"date":"2023-04-20T17:18:50","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T21:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=32924"},"modified":"2023-04-27T19:28:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T23:28:23","slug":"central-york-junior-panthers-earn-their-way-to-the-final-four-at-the-owha-provincials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/central-york-junior-panthers-earn-their-way-to-the-final-four-at-the-owha-provincials\/","title":{"rendered":"Central York Junior Panthers earn their way to \u2018The Final Four\u2019 at the OWHA Provincials"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Central York U22 AA Panthers played their best hockey of the season over a four-day period at the Ontario Championships in Mississauga from April 13-16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Junior Panthers kicked off their quadrant of the tournament draw by winning Pool C with a record of 2-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday night, Central York defeated the Bluewater Hawks 4-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although they were edged 2-1 by the Cambridge Rivulettes on Friday morning, the Panthers rallied on Friday night to shutout the Whitby Wolves 3-0 and eliminated their \u201cnemesis of late\u201d from the Provincials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shutout and elimination of the Wolves avenged a semi-final loss earlier in the month at the U22 Elite League Championship tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Panthers rolled confidently into the weekend after their win over Whitby and proceeded to eliminate the Elite League gold medal winners\u2014the London Devilettes\u2014with a hard-fought 3-2 quarter final victory. With their big win over London, the Panthers carried their 3-1 record in Mississauga into a semi-final berth on Sunday morning versus the Durham West Lightning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliminating this year\u2019s silver medalists (Whitby) and gold medalists (London) took a significant physical toll on the Panthers as a number of players were hobbled with untimely injuries. However, the sky seemed to be the limit for the prowling Panthers with momentum on their side versus Durham West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, the elation of Saturday dimmed to disappointment on Sunday. For all intents and purposes, the Panthers\u2019 season came to a crushing end in the semifinal as the Lightning defeated our valiant local gals 6-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Panthers then limped into the bronze medal game\u2014seemingly spent by the Athenean effort needed to eliminate Whitby and London in consecutive games\u2014and fell in the consolation final 6-1 to the bronze medal-winning Burlington Barracudas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second consecutive Final Four finish was met with some degree of disappointment by the team after their win over a London team that featured five Team Canada players, but the Junior Panthers did assert themselves in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their goal in both the season-ending April tournaments was to \u201cPlay on Sunday\u201d\u2014the battle cry of any championship-calibre team.   The team should be proud of a season that was \u201coh so close\u201d and filled with program growth, team victories, and notable individual accomplishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five Panther teams made it to quarterfinals at OWHA championships across the province\u2014each earning Top 8 status in Ontario.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Central York U22 AA Panthers played their best hockey of the season over a four-day period at the Ontario Championships in Mississauga from April 13-16. The Junior Panthers kicked off their quadrant of the tournament draw by winning Pool C with a record of 2-1. On Thursday night, Central York defeated the Bluewater Hawks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8z2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 17:45:50","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\/32924","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=32924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}