What a game! The Onondaga Redhawks defeat the Newtown Golden Eagles 5-7 in overtime! This game started with Dwayne Porter scoring in the opening seconds off of a beautiful feed from Ryan Lewis. Then 90 seconds later, Dwayne added his second of the game to give the Redhawks a quick 2-0 lead. Newtown scored their first goal of the 5 minutes in the first period only to be answered by the first of three Gewas Schindler goals to build the Redhawk lead to 3-1. Then Newtown ended the first period with a long fast-break pass to score as the buzzer sounded to end the first period with the Redhawks leading 3-2.
The second period opened with tough loose ball play and aggressive defense on both ends of the floor as the Redhawks battled the visiting Eagles. Gewas Schindler scored to make it 4-2 Redhawks. Newtown was able to capitalize and tally a power-play goal and add a second score of the period to knot up the game at 4.
Then the goaltending turned from solid to outstanding as Jeff Powless and the Newtown goaltender combined for over 23 minutes of beautiful saves in front of aggressive defense. Scott Ditzel, Mike Abrams, Clayton Jones, JD Jones and Brandy Gibson kept pressure on the Newtown attackers minimizing the Newtown possessions to one shot. On the offensive end of the floor, Brett Bucktooth, AJ Bucktooth, Gewas Schindler and Neal Powless kept constant pressure on the Newtown defense outshooting the visitors 2-1 in the period. The near capacity crowd jumped to their feet as Brett Bucktooth appeared to add the 5th goal for the Redhawks only for it to be disallowed due to a crease violation. So with neither team scoring in the third, the Redhawks and Eagles wet to overtime tied at 4.
In a game where heavy checks and quick slides made it difficult on both ends to find a clear alley to the goal, it was a lob pass that broke the scoreless tension. Two minutes into the overtime period, Dustin Hill was able to find the cutting Dave Stout coming from behind the goal with the lob pass. The pass froze the defenders as Dave was able to catch and score to give the Redhawks the lead at 5-4. Two minutes later, Newtown created a 3-2 fast break opportunity and tied the score at 5.
In the next possession, the Newtown defenders were penalized 5 minutes for fighting, 2 minutes for checking from behind and a 10 minute game misconduct putting the Redhawks on a 5-3 power-play. 10 seconds into the power-play, Gewas scored to make the score 6-5 followed by another power-play goal by Brett Bucktooth a minute later ending the scoring at 7-5. If these two teams should meet in the finals, it will be an exciting series.