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42 - The Oakville Beaver, Friday February 9, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Oakville Soccer Club open registration The final open registration session for the upcoming Oakville Soccer Club season will be held tomorrow (Saturday) from 9 a.m. until noon at Oakville Town Hall. Approximately 800 players registered during last week's open registration, bumping enrollment for this season up to approximately 8,600 players. More than 10,000 signed up with the Oakville Soccer Club last year. Joy Neefs, the club's manager of marketing operations and planning, said this year's online registration has increased by nearly 1,000 from last year's totals. The club encourages registrants to use the online signup option. Neefs added the club has seen an increase in both the boys' and girls' 15-16 divisions, as well as the men's open division. Teams have been added in an effort to accommodate the extra registrants. After tomorrow, registration will still be accepted at the club during regular office hours, but will be taken on a first-come, first-serve availability basis. BARRIE ERSKINE / OAKVILLE BEAVER REGISTRATION: Oakville Town Hall was a busy place last Saturday as approximately 800 players signed up for the upcoming Oakville Soccer Club season. Five hundred of the registrations came between 9 and 10 a.m., keeping the 50 volunteers working the registration table busy. The club's final open registration session will take place tomorrow, again at Oakville Town Hall. Iroquois Ridge hoping to end Burlington's hockey reign By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF They are known as the Trailblazers, but Iroquois Ridge wouldn't mind following a path set by another Oakville school. Last year the unheralded Loyola Hawks ended Burlington's decade-long dominance in girls hockey. This season, the Iroquois Ridge boys' hockey team would like to be the next upstart team to wrestle the Halton title from its neighbours to the west. In the last seven years, only one Oakville team -- Q.E. Park in 2003 -- has won the boys hockey championship. While Iroquois Ridge is certainly not the favourite, it is among a pack of teams that could dethrone the defending champion Notre Dame Fightin' Irish. The Trailblazers concluded the regular season Wednesday with a thrilling 3-2 win over the Abbey Park Eagles, another of the Oakville contenders. The victory improved Iroquois Ridge to 9-4, leaving them third in a division where just three points separate the top four teams. "We can give Notre Dame a run," said Iroquois Ridge goalie Adam Mitchell. "They're an extremely good team but the Oakville hockey system is getting a lot better." The gap has certainly narrowed, a point driven home last year when Notre Dame needed two late goals to edge T.A. Blakelock 5-3 in the final. Iroquois Ridge's nine wins this season include "We can give a 3-1 victory over Notre Dame a Blakelock, which is run. They're an again in the mix heading into the extremely good playoffs. team but the Against Abbey Oakville hockey Park, the system is getting Trailblazers took a lot better." the lead three times. The Eagles Iroquois Ridge tied it twice and looked as though goalie Adam Mitchell they might do it again when Iroquois Ridge took two late penalties. That gave Abbey Park a 6-on-3 advantage for the final 34 seconds after the Eagles pulled their goalie for the extra attacker, but Abbey Park was unable to capitalize. Mitchell turned aside all 12 shots he faced in the final period, allowing Marcus Pryde's goal in the final minute of the sec- ond period to stand up as the winner. Mitchell could have used a recliner for all the action he had in the first six minutes of the third, but certainly made up for it in the last half of the period. He came up with a big save on the Eagles' Brandon Smith and with just over two minutes to play, after stopping Tyler Schlonies' shot, the puck dropped behind him but Mitchell reached back with his stick just in time to prevent Jamie McKeown from jamming it in. "They really peppered me," the Grade 12 netminder said. "It's cool though. We have a lot of friends on their team so we've been looking forward to this game all year." Pryde added, "They're our buddies. We take it serious but every now and then we'll crack a smile or a joke with them." Pryde certainly brought a smile to his teammates' faces. Just 31 seconds after Abbey Park had tied the game 2-2, Pryde carried the puck into the Eagles' zone, cut through the slot and fired a shot into the top corner. After a scoreless first, Brett West opened the scoring, redirecting Pryde's pass by Eagles' goalie Evan Moore. Abbey Park would even it up just over a minute later when McKeown kept the puck on a threeon-one break. His initial shot was stopped but he poked his own rebound by Mitchell. Another 30 seconds later, the 'Blazers were back in front when Kevin McKay tipped in Scott Johnston's pass. "It's exactly what we needed, bouncing back from those goals," Pryde said. Teams remember Meaford tragedy While the teams may be rivals on the ice and friends off of it, both teams showed their concern for fellow players they had never met. The well-attended game raised funds to establish an award at Georgian Bay Secondary School in Meaford in honour of five players killed in a car accident. The Trailblazers also wore five-pointed stars on their jerseys in their memory. "We took a hit at home when (Oakville rep player) Alex Corrance passed away," Mitchell said. "A couple of the guys on our team were close to him and our school lost Jamie Kyes. We have an award for him. It's a way to respect his loss and remember him as well. We figured this was the least we could do to support another school going through the same thing." Donati, Tavares leading OHL scorers Blades open playoffs Oakville's Tyler Donati regained the lead in the Ontario Hockey League scoring race with an outstanding week that earned him the league's player of the week honours. Donati began the week with a goal in the OHL all-star game in Saginaw and continued to play like an all-star upon his return to the Belleville Bulls. He had a goal and an assist in a 2-0 win over Peterborough Thursday and the following night hit the 100-point mark for the first time in his career by scoring the game-winning goal and setting up two more in a 6-3 victory over the Mississauga IceDogs. He capped the week by matching a career-best with six points -- a goal and five assists -- on Saturday in an 8-5 win over Owen Sound. The 20-year-old right winger has at least two points in each of his last nine games -- all Belleville wins -- a stretch in which he has 10 goals and 29 points. Donati's 11-point week vaulted him back to the top of the league scoring race with 49 goals and 111 points, ahead of fellow Oakville resident John Tavares, who was named the OHL player of the month on Wednesday. Tavares won the weekly award twice in January. Tavares, who is featured on the cover of this week's The Hockey News, had 22 goals and 39 points in the month of January, recording points in 12 of the Oshawa Generals' 13 games. The highlight of the month for the 16-year-old was a sevenpoint night against Windsor on Jan. 25, a game in which he scored his 50th goal of the season. Donati and Tavares will square off Sunday when Belleville plays Oshawa at 7 p.m. in a game that will be televised on Rogers Sportsnet. The teams met Wednesday, with Donati racking up a goal and four assists in a 5-1 Belleville win. tonight versus Chargers The Oakville Blades will begin the Provincial Junior A Hockey League playoffs tonight at home against the Mississauga Chargers. Oakville, 38-9-1-1 in regular-season play, finished 47 points ahead of the Chargers and has won all five meetings between the clubs so far this year. Game time for the series' opening game is 7:30 p.m. at Dominion Twin Rinks. Game 2 is slated for 8 p.m. tomorrow in Mississauga, with Game 3 also to be played in Mississauga, an 8 p.m. start Monday. The series shifts back to Oakville for Game 4 Friday, and Game 5 (if necessary) would be played next Saturday at Dominion Twin Rinks. Other first-round matchups in the West Conference playoffs include the Brampton Capitals versus the Milton IceHawks, the Hamilton Red Wings against the Streetsville Derbys, and the Burlington Cougars facing the Georgetown Raiders. Thanks to its second-place finish, Oakville would hold home-ice advantage in the second round as well.