Senior Muskies relish one more shot at OFSAA

Muskie centre Matt DePiero is used to the OFSAA routine.
One of 11 Grade 12 players on this year’s hockey squad, DePiero said while previous journeys to the all-Ontarios have been a learning experience, he also felt some of those teams underachieved.

“They’ve been good trips. A little disappointing,” he admitted. “I thought we went there with teams more capable of doing better than we have.
“It’s a lot of fun, for sure,” he added. We’re going to play the best teams in the province.
“It’s a good challenge.”
And DePiero made clear that despite the black-and-gold being ranked 11th out of the 20 teams to play in St. Catharines from March 23-26, he considers Fort High to be a dark horse to win its first provincial title since 2001.
“We’ve got one of the best teams we’ve had to do down there,” he remarked. “We play well as a team, we play for each other.
“We’ve got a really good chance of moving on through our pool, at least, and hopefully getting into the medal round.
“This team’s a fairly tight team and everybody seems to play for each other, and there’s a lot of unity on this team that’ll help us through the next two weeks and on into OFSAA,” DePiero reasoned.
Fellow Grade 12 player, and assistant captain, Brendan Cawston agreed.
“This team doesn’t have all the talent that some of the other teams did,” noted Cawston. “But we just have good chemistry.”
DePiero has previewed the grid for OFSAA and said that while a couple of the schools on the list are familiar, many enter the tournament as complete unknowns to Fort High.
“There’s the annuals from St. Mike’s [Toronto’s St. Michael’s College] and St. Mary’s and stuff, but a lot of teams I didn’t recognize,” he said.
But he also noted that having seen some of the teams in previous years doesn’t provide much advantage given each school is forced to reload on the fly every off-season to compensate for graduating players.
“You’re always going to go in blind because you don’t see any of those teams at all through the season, so you don’t know what they have year-to-year, even the annual teams,” he explained.
“You don’t know exactly what they’re going to bring.
“You know if they’re going to the all-Ontarios, they’re going to be a good, strong team that you’ve got to play your best against,” DePiero stressed.
In order to do some damage, the Muskies are going to have to knock home some greasy, lucky goals—much like Cawston’s winner in the opener of the NorWOSSA final against the Dryden Eagles.
Cawston just charged the net and chopped the puck in the general direction of the goal before he and an Eagles’ defender crashed into goalie Zach Lake.
“I didn’t even know the puck had gone in,” admitted Cawston. “I just saw the ref signal, so I just raised my arms and tried to go with it.”
Muskie captain Jamie Kaun admitted in some of his earlier trips to the all-Ontarios that he had underestimated the level of talent the tournament can attract.
He vowed to make no such mistake in his final go-around.
“I just wasn’t as experienced,” Kaun recalled.
The defenceman, who led the Muskies in scoring and finished second overall in NorWOSSA with 28 points, predicted the Muskies will go deep into this year’s tournament.
“I expect good things,” remarked Kaun. “I expect we’ll make it out of our pool, but it’ll be close.”
And if Kaun and the Muskies get on a roll and bring home a title? “It would be unreal,” he said.
The schedule-makers didn’t do the black-and-gold any favours in the early going as they’ll kick things off next Tuesday against second-ranked Denis Morris (St. Catharines) before meeting No. 8 St. Mary’s (Woodstock) on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday evening brings a match-up with No. 14 Mayfield (Caledon) before the Muskies round out pool play against No. 19 Widdifield (North Bay) next Thursday morning.
To advance, the Muskies will have to pull off at least one upset as only the top two teams from each pool advance to Thursday night’s quarter-finals.
The gold-medal game is slated for March 26 at 8 p.m. (EDT).
What will be key for the Muskies to remember is that even the lower-ranked teams didn’t bumble their way into provincials, and could provide significant headaches in the pool stage.
Widdifield, for instance, is making its OFSAA debut after edging the St. Basil Saints (Sault Ste. Marie) 2-1 to claim the Northern Ontario Secondary Schools Association berth.
Mayfield entered the tournament as an at-large bid from the Region of Peel Secondary Schools Athletic Association.
Mayfield was defeated 3-2 in the league final by No. 1 St. Marcellinus (Mississauga).
Meanwhile, the St. Mary’s Warriors also will provide a stiff challenge to the Muskies as they’ll enter the OFSAA tournament riding a 24-game win streak after edging Mother Teresa (London) 4-3 to claim the Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association crown.
Denis Morris, for its part, is making its third appearance in the last four years after edging the Sherwood Saints (Hamilton) 2-1 to dethrone the defending Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association champs.
The Redmen also are looking for their second OFSAA title in three years after having won the 2008 championship.