It was a clean sweep for the Central West Senior Hockey League as interlocking play with East Coast league teams made its debut over the weekend.
In Grand Falls-Windsor, the defending Allan Cup champion Cataracts downed the Conception Bay Blues 8-3 Sunday, the day after they blasted the Southern Shore Breakers 8-1 in the Cats’ first home game of the 2017-18 season at Joe Byrne Memorial Stadium.
The Blues and Breakers also visited Gander, where the homestanding Flyers beat the Blues 7-2 on Saturday and followed up with a 5-2 Sunday-afternoon victory over the Breakers.
The four-team East Coast league, born out of the now-defunct Avalon East circuit, agreed to the interlocking games to help add more variance — and game nights — to the schedule of the three-team CWSHL.
Each ECSHL team will have one game against each Central West opponent. All the games will be played on CWSHL rinks and will count in the standings of the respective leagues. So will individual stats.
The remaining teams play their first interlocking games in early December, when the St. John’s Caps and Northeast Eagles of the ECSHL travel to Clarenville to take on the Caribous.
Clarenville had the weekend off, while the Caps and Eagles hooked up Friday night in a regular ECSHL game in Torbay, where St. John’s goalie Scott Bray made 41 saves as the league-leading Caps won 5-2 for their fifth victory in six games. Northeast fell to 1-4-1.
INTERLOCKING RESULTS
Goal scorers from CWSHL-ECSHL interlocking games over the weekend in Central Newfoundland:
Sunday
Grand Falls-Windsor 8, Conception Bay 3
Cataracts — Michael Hynes (2), Danny Wicks (2), Brandon Hynes, Travis Champion, Kyle McGuirk, Rodi Short, David Byrne; Blues — Brandon Street, other scorers unavailable
Gander 5, Southern Shore 2
Flyers — Mitch Oake (2), Jordan Escott, Andrew Paul, Colton Collin; Breakers — Andrew Gale, Peter Kavanagh
———
Saturday
Grand Falls-Windsor 8, Southern Shore 1
Cataracts — Brandon Hynes (2), Travis Champion (2), Kyle McGuirk (2), Danny Wicks, David Byrne; Breakers — Dylan Sheldon
Gander 7, Conception Bay 2
Flyers — Brad Power (2), Andrew Ryan, Scott Doody, Andrew Paul, Patty O’Keefe, Lucas McKay; Blues — Garrett Murphy (2)
