Rebels ready for exciting play-off run

Posted Feb 17, 2012 By Bill Freeman

By Bill Freeman
EMC Sports - Campbellford - Now the excitement really begins for the Campbellford Rebels after wrapping up a brilliant Empire B Junior C Hockey League regular season campaign with a solid 3 - 1 win over the Napanee Raiders.
The Rebels will face Amherstview (19-19-2) in one semi-final and Picton will take on the winner of the Port Hope-Napanee preliminary series. It should be a terrific match-up with Campbellford and Amherstview split their games with five wins apiece.
The series won’t start until the Pirates-Raiders best-of-five set is finished.
The Rebels (26-13-1) finished two points out of first place behind Picton (27-12-1). After stumbling out of the EBJCHL blocks with six wins and six losses in their first 12 games the Rebels made some changes behind the bench, added to their roster and caught fire winning 12 of their next 14 games and never looked back.
But for a three-loss hiccup two weeks ago, their torrid pace never let up and they nearly caught up to the league-leading Pirates.
Campbellford put the deadliest power play in the league on the ice converting at a 22 per cent clip during the season, that, coupled with the leagues’ top penalty kill (86 per cent) and stellar goaltending by Jesse Labreque and his 2.95 goals against average, second behind Picton’s Matt Kaludis (2.70), made the Rebels a very difficult team to match up against.,
Nick Orton (28-29-57) was second in league scoring behind Napanee’s Colin Doelman (28-32-60) while team-mates Levi George (31-19-50) was fourth, Ryan Crowley (18-31-49) was fifth and Josh Adams (16-30-46) was ninth.
George led the EBJCHL in goals.
In their final regular season game, the Raiders took an early 1 - 0 lead on a goal by Bud Norris. Campbellford evened things with 44 seconds to play in the first when Seamus McDougall connected with assists from Justin Crowley and Adams.
A shorthanded unassisted goal by Joe McKeown at the 6:59 mark of the second made it 2 - 1. Steven Clarke’s power play marker from captain Lucas Hooley at the 14:19 of the third capped the scoring.
Game one and two of their series with Amherstview are Feb. 21 & 25 (7:30 p.m.).