The Toronto Shooting Stars hosted the Durham Turfdogs in the first professional sport game at the Maple Leaf Gardens in thirteen years. The old mecca of hockey is now named the Mattamy Athletic Complex and will become the newest home of one of the newest Canadian Lacrosse League franchises, the Shooting Stars.
Durham Turfdog Kyle O’Brien opened the scoring with a shot that would squeak through the arms of Craig Robertson. The Shooting Stars would answer quickly as former Turfdog Aaron Grayson put the ball through the wickets of netminder John Chesebrough.
The Turfdogs would add two more goals including a cannon from the outside complements of Brampton,ON native Shane Scott. Todd Collins would add the other marker to bring the Turfdogs up by two.
Grayson would score his second goal of the game with a beautiful passing play from Derek Hopcroft and Blake Kenny to cut the lead to one.
Scott would blast another shot by Robertson to bring the Turfdogs up 4-2.
Grayson would continue his scoring dominance as he buried his third goal of the game off beautiful powerplay ball movement.
Once again, Scott answered back, but this time from a great passing play with former OLA Jr. B Halton Hills Bulldog teammate Nic Grasby.
The first non Grayson Shooting Star goal would be scored by Mack O’Brien to bring the score to 5-4 in favour of the Turfdogs.
The Halton Hills duo would hook up again, but this time Grasby found the back of the cage with an outstanding crease dive shot.
Another Ex-Bulldog found the score sheet as Kenney opened the scoring of the second quarter to bring the Shooting Stars within one goal.
The Turfdogs would pull pour on two goals from the speedy Eric Bissell and who other than Scott, this time on the power play.
After the 8th goal for the Turfdogs, the Shooting Stars switched up netminders and would call upon Toronto,ON native Angus Dinley.
Mike Gillan bullrushed through almost every Turfdog on the floor and finished it off with a rip past Chesebrough.
Dinley would make numerous big stops to keep his team to being only down by two goals at the end of the half.
The third quarter would begin the parade to the penalty box as both teams would take many penalties which lead to many powerplays and four on four situations but the penalty kills of both teams would only allow four goals in the third quarter, including a beautiful penalty shot goal by Grasby.
The lone fight of the game was between Kenney and Graham Bergsma, but Bergsma would lose his footing after two punches and fell down ending the fight quickly.
Dinley made the save of the game as he sprawled back to stop a crease to crease quick-stick from Nic Grasby and Scott DeFrancesco.
The fourth quarter opened with a DeFrancesco powerplay marker to put Durham up 9-6.
Toronto put on the pressure with three goals from O’Brien, Wasson-Quigge and Connor Daly, but it would not be enough to tie up the game.
Leading the way for the Turfdogs was Scott and Ransom who each added five points. On the other side of the floor, Josh Wasson-Quigge added five points while Grayson added three goals and a helper for the Shooting Stars.
Turfdogs netminder Chesebrough posted 55 saves on 65 shots. Shooting Stars goaltender Robertson made 18 saves on 26 shots while Dinley shut the door on 28 of 31 shots.
The two clubs will meet once again on January 27th, but this time it will be at the GM Centre in Oshawa.
