Raiders Save Best for Last With Shootout Win

Tyler Laureault - 3rd Star
Tyler Laureault – 1st Star

by Romano Di Franco

The Raiders saved their best effort offensively for their final game of the season with a thrilling 6-5 win over the Cornwall Colts in a shoot out.

Despite trailing  2-0 by the 9:38 mark of the first period, the Raiders stormed back and stole the lead just under five minutes later when Beau Binnie, Evan Boucher, and Zachary Gravel.

The Raiders outshot their opponent for just the fifth time this season as they blasted a season-high 48 shots on Colts netminder Jakob Robillard. That surpasses the previous high of 47 shots against the Navan Grads back on November 6. This marked the first win for the Raiders when they outshot their opponents. Prior to this win they were 0-4.

William Venne concluded the season with a three-game point streak with an assist on Gravel’s 17th goal of the season. Louis Chabot also picked up his third goal of the season while Matt McQuade scored the game tying goal with just 3:11 left to go in the third period after Cornwall had retaken the lead 5-4.

After the overtime frame went scoreless, the game went to the shoot-out with Cornwall shooting first as the road team. Tyler Laureault stopped Matthew Toporowski on the first attempt. Zachary Gravel took the first shot for the Raiders but had his shot stopped by Robillard. Colts’ leading scorer Emerick Nadeau took the second shot but was denied by Laureault and then the third period hero Matt McQuade put one into the net forcing Sam Gaudreau to score or lose. Tyler Laureault stymied Gaudreau and the Raiders poured onto the ice to celebrate.

Beau Binnie – 3rd Star

Tyler Laureault started in goal for Nepean and turned in another spectacular performance stopping 38 of the 43 shots he faced for an 0.884 save percentage. More importantly, he went 3-3 in the shoot-out to steal the win for Nepean.

For his efforts, Laureault earned the nod as the game’s first star while Colts keeper Jakob Robillard grabbed second star honours and Beau Binnie was awarded the game’s third star in his final game for the Raiders.