by Romano Di Franco
The Nepean Raiders travelled to the Benson Centre for the third to last game of the 2025 portion of the season. This time around they faced off against the Cornwall Colts. Nepean came off a barnburner 7-4 loss to the Carleton Place Canadians and the Colts were reeling of a 3-1 loss to the Smiths Falls Bears.
For the starting goalies, John Gedraitis made his first start in goal in a month a half. He was activated off the injured reserve list. Colton Rheuame was in net for the Colts.
Cornwall opened the scoring with goals from Darrell Diakite and Luc Beliveau. Despite that, Nepean had two great chances in the first period, the first from Raphael Tellier and the second from Lucas Leblanc.
The Colts extended the lead to 3-0 on the strength of Chancey Novasad’s third goal of the season assisted from Derek Rhodes.
Instead of folding, the Nepean Raiders made things interesting late in the second period. Luka Benoit scored his team leading 16th goal of the season assisted form Tyler Smith and Jack Yates.
Cornwall restored their three goal lead from Derek Rhodes’ fifth goal of the campaign assisted from Joe Vida and Jack Kent.
Things got more interesting for the Nepean Raiders when Tyler Smith was rewarded a penalty shot in which he scored on. The end result was his tenth goal of the season. Lyndon Lamb would help the Colts restore their their three goal lead again from a great feed from Colby Lauzon.
With eighteen seconds left to go in regulation, Luka Benoit scored his second goal of the game and that would be it as the Cornwall Colts held on to a 5-3 win.
For the three star sections, for his first goal of the season, Darrell Diakite was the first star of the game for the Colts. Joe Vida was named the second star of the game for his two assist effort. Finally Luka Benoit who scored two goals on the evening was named the third star of the game for the Nepean Raiders.
Nepean’s next game takes place on December 20th against the Rockland Nationals for the CCHL’s Winter Showcase.
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