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Though they never quite ran away with it last night, the Brampton Excelsiors also never gave their fans any real cause for concern as they handled the New Westminster Salmonbellies by a score of 8-5 in game one of the 2008 Mann Cup finals.

Brampton’s Mike Hominuck lashed out for three goals, Colin Doyle had one goal and two helpers, and player of the game Dan Dawson scored one short-handed and played aggressive offense all game long even while wearing multiple New West defenders like big bulky jewelry. Cliff Smith and Jordan McBride each had two goals and one assist for the Bellies.

The Salmonbellies struck first just 38 seconds in, with Jordan Hall running up the floor and passing off to Smith, who whaled an underhand shot from up the middle, beating Anthony Cosmo down low. New West hung on to the 1-0 lead for nearly ten minutes until Chris Gill took an ugly-angled shot that dribbled to the feet of Cosmo and found its way to Phil Sanderson who launched the fast-break pass to Hominuck who buried his first of the game under the left arm of New West goaltender Tyler Richards.

Just a minute and a half later, Dan Teat accepted a nonchalant pass from Colin Doyle and slipped it into the net to go up 2-1. Brampton’s third goal of the evening would come from Blaine Manning and his cross-crease run. Doyle capped off the first-period Excelsiors scoring with an unfettered shot from way out, banging it into the back of the net for the 4-1 lead. The only other fireworks in the period came courtesy of Bubba Westwood and Brodie Merrill, who squared off for a short-lived fight that featured only a few punches before Westwood lost his footing and both boys were carted off for five minutes apiece.

“The West is always big and strong and physical,” said Dawson. “We know what to expect. I think there was a bit too much penalty trouble for both teams though.”

Brampton earned its first infraction of the second period just over a minute and a half in with Jon Harasym sitting for interference. Well-known penalty murderer Dawson got on the floor to rag the ball for well over 30 seconds before making a slow run up the middle to plant Brampton goal number five on Richards’ right side.

“We thrive on that,” said Dawson. “Any time you can kill an entire penalty like that it can really deflate the other team.”

Not even one minute later New West’s Matt Brascia checked Harasym from behind and the other aspect of the Excelsiors special teams took over, with Teat making it 6-1 with an extra attacker on the floor. With the young Bellies D deploying effortless double teams on the potent Brampton power forwards, the Excelsiors were limited to just those two goals in the second. New West got one of their own, regaining their early passing composure and setting up a crisp Jordan McBride powerplay marker to make it 6-2 to end the period.

Smith struck first for the Bellies in the third period, cutting the Brampton lead in half on a wide open strike from up the middle that beat a fast-collapsing Cosmo. Hominuck retaliated over six minutes later, bumping the Brampton lead back to four goals with a score of 7-3. Off the following face-off Bubba Westwood got the better of Paul Dawson in a tangle that got him tossed from the game for incurring his second major. If he’d hoped to take away from the Brampton momentum, however, mission unaccomplished as Hominuck scored again just one minute later to make it 8-3. New West finished off their scoring with markers from McBride and Jamie Floris for the 8-5 final. The last few minutes of the game were spent with goaltender Richards running back and forth to the bench in favour of the extra offensive attacker, but Cosmo shut down every scoring opportunity the final frantic moments served up. He finished the game with 34 saves on 39 shots.

“He was our MVP tonight,” noted Dawson.

Game two takes place tonight (Sept. 6) at the Powerade Centre, 7:30 PM EST. Attendance for last night’s game was 2,550.

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