By Alex Mahar [1]
BELLEVILLE– The Trenton Golden Hawks [2] had an incredible showing on the national stage Saturday afternoon as the team came out flying to earn a 7-3 win over the Markham Royals [3] at the Duncan McDonald Memorial Community Gardens.
The game was aired nationally on CHCH TV, [4] as the OJHL game of the week.
In front of a packed crowd of about 1,000 people, Hawks forward Wyatt George brought the fans out of their seats early with his 15th goal of the season.
The Royals came back down the ice minutes later to tie the game at one.
George and the Hawks didn’t wait long to jump back out in front with George’s second tally of the period.
In the second frame, defensemen Colin Van Den Hurk scored the loan Hawks goal on an individual effort to take a 3-1 lead heading into the third.
Markham cut the lead in half moments into the third period.
The game began to open up halfway through the period. The Royals took a double minor penalty putting Trenton on the power-play.
With the man advantage, defensemen Sam Duchesne [5] regained Trenton’s two-goal lead with a rocket from the point.
The goal was a milestone for Duchesne and the Golden Hawks.
The power-play rip was Duchesne’s 53rd point of the season which established a new franchise record for points by a defenseman in a single season, surpassing Christian Lloyd’s [6] 52 point campaign in 2014-2015.
Less than a minute later, Adam Kim opened the game up with a backdoor tap in to extend the Hawks lead to three.
George hit the empty net with under three minutes left on the clock to complete the hat-trick, his first career OJHL three-goal game.
Cameron Gaylor threw a little salt on the Royals wounds less than a minute later with his 16th goal of the season.
G-Hawks forward Sullivan Sparkes also tallied two assists in the game. Duchesne finished with a goal and two assists, while George picked up the hat-trick to pace the Golden Hawks offensive outburst.
Anand Oberoi was solid in between the pipes for Trenton turning aside 23 of 26 Royal shots for the win.
The Golden Hawks improved to a league-best 38-10-1-2 on the season. With three games left on their regular season schedule, Trenton leads the Wellington Dukes [7] atop the east division standings by one point.
Wellington still has five games remaining including a massive showdown with the Hawks in Trenton on Friday, Feb. 21.
The Hawks will return to action at the Duncan McDonald Memorial Community Gardens this Friday, Feb. 14 against the Whitby Fury.