In a rematch of last season's final, the defending champion, Omegas beat the Flyers handily with a 6-1 win in the early game. Even with a short bench, the Omegas went up by a 6-0 lead going in to the third period. This season's first Player of the Week is Lance Ross of the Omegas who scored four goals in the victory.

In the middle game, the IceDogs beat the Hawks by the same score of 6-1. Jordon & Matt DeBoer of the IceDogs led the way with three points each.

The late game saw a match-up of two "rebuilding" teams. The Cattle Barons came out on top of the Stars with a 5-1 win. O.J. Deelstra & newcomer, Mike Melo led the way for the Cattle Barons with three points each. Between the two teams, there was nine new players in this game who did not play last season.

All of the following additions or player moves have been approved since the meeting last week Thursday:

The Hawks added Jake Huizinga, Scott Barneveld, & Kyle Barneveld.
The Stars added Eric Vanderlinde.
Brady DeBoer has moved to the Cattle Barons from the IceDogs (with permission from the IceDogs).
Steve DeBoer has moved to the Cattle Barons from the IceDogs (with permission from the IceDogs).

As most of you are aware by now, the big change going into this season is that our games will all be played an hour earlier than in the past. Everyone has agreed that this is a good thing. We all would like to get home an hour earlier than in the past.

The schedule was approved without having to make any changes. We will not need to skip over any Fridays for Christmas or New Years this season, so we will be playing every Friday night except for January 18 & February 1. We will not play on those two dates due to Silverstick tournaments. All of our regular season games will be played at the Point Edward Arena. Keep in mind that there will be some playoff games that will be on Saturdays in March. Try to keep these open. You don't want to let your team down.

We decided to go back to the old system of only having the ice flooded between games and not done every two periods. If the arena staff insist on flooding every two periods, we will not fight it.

The cost per team for this season is $3500.00. This went down from last year's fee of $3700.00 per team.
The team reps will need to pay the league with four post dated cheques of $875.00 each. They should be dated as follows:
October 1, 2012
November 1, 2012
December 1, 2012
January 1, 2013
Please help your team out by paying your reps as soon as you are able to.

The "Cougars" have formally changed their team's name to the "Cattle Barons" and they will now wear green jerseys.

We spent a long time approving the team rosters this season. This was because there is a lot of new players that have been added this season.
Here is a list of the players that were approved to switch teams:
Josh Schenk moved to the Hawks from the IceDogs.
Bryan Schenk moved to the Hawks from the IceDogs.
Greg Wierenga will either play for the Hawks or stay with the Stars. Whoever he plays for first, he stays with for this season. The Stars still have his "rights" going into next season no matter where he plays this season.
Chris Simard moved to the Stars from the Hawks.
Ryan Benjamins moved to the Stars from the IceDogs.
Dave Vangorkum moved to the IceDogs from the Cougars (Cattle Barons).
Trevor Benjamins moved to the Cattle Barons from the IceDogs.
Owen Veenendaal moved to the Cattle Barons from the Hawks.
Here is a list of the new players that were approved to play this season:
Hawks: Calvin Pelleboer, Clint Schenk, & Trevor Kreeft.
Omegas: Trevor Roost.
Stars: Jon Vanderlinde, Jeremy Windle, Jake Core, Steve Sipkens, Kevin Smit, Tim Vanderlinde, Mitch Core, Tyler Bos, Sean Jardine, Joel DeBoer, Collin Timmermans, & Derek Jackson.
Flyers: Matt Steadman.
IceDogs: Scott McGlyn.
Cattle Barons: Chris Tenhage, Eric Bakker, Adrian Tamminga, Derek Wolski, Evan Hartemink, Mike Melo, & Billy Freer.

There are not any suspensions from last season that have been carried over into the start of this season. Everyone has a clean slate.

We have integrated an "accumulative penalty minute suspension" system this season. The purpose of this is to deter the "repeat offenders" from taking countless penalties. Here's a rundown of how it works:
If a player reaches 30 minutes in penalties, he will be suspended for one game. If he reaches 40 minutes in penalties, then he will be suspended for an additional two games. He will be suspended an additional two games if he reaches 50 penalty minutes. Two more games for reaching 60, 70, etc.

Congratulations goes out to the Omegas, who were able to sweep the Flyers to win the League Championship with a 5-3 victory.
In the early going of the game, it looked like the Omegas were going to walk away with it. Karsten Berg scored twice and gave the Omegas a 2-0 lead in the first three minutes of the game. The Flyers settled down at this point and thanks to goals by Darryl Poort & Sid Karelsen, had the game tied up going in to the second period.
The second period was pretty quiet until Matt Kreeft scored late in the second to put the Flyers up 3-2.
Once again, the third period was pretty quiet and it looked like the Flyers might bring the series to a third and deciding game. This is the way it looked until the Flyers got into some penalty trouble and Fred VanReenen Jr. of the Omegas was able to score twice on two separate power-plays. With just under four minutes left in the third period, Mark Zylstra scored the clinching goal for the Omegas to seal the deal.
Fred VanReenen Jr. earned the Player of the Game honours for scoring the game tying & game winning goals.

The Omegas took game 1 of the final series by beating the Flyers 9-6.
It looked like the Omegas were going to blow away the Flyers when they got off to a 3-0 lead in the first seven minutes of the game. The next seven minutes was all Flyers. They came storming back to tie it up at 3-3. In the second period, the Omegas took over again and held a 8-5 lead going into the third period. Half-way through the third, Ryan Cross scored his second goal of the game for the Flyers to once again, make it interesting. The Flyers put on some late game pressure to try to tie the game up, but when Zach VanReenen scored his second goal of the game into the empty net, it was game over.
With it being such a high scoring game, a number of players scored multiple points. Matt Kreeft had three assists for the Flyers. Kev Karelsen had a strong game with three goals and an assist. Chad VanReenen got a goal and two assists for the Omegas. The Player of the Game was Kalen Hellinga, who scored four goals and added an assist in the Omegas' win.

The Flyers will look to win tonight's game to keep their hopes alive of repeating as League Champions.
Tonight's (Saturday, March 17) game starts @ 6:45pm at the RBC Centre on Rink 2.