See-saw battle between Royals, Bulldogs

Whether it's the bus ride, home cooking or just plain old home-ice advantage, neither team in this year’s Nova Scotia Junior Hockey League championship has been able to figure out how to win in the opponent's arena.

Sunday evening, the Antigonish Bulldogs went into the first and second intermissions with leads of 4-1 and 7-3, scoring four more times to the Windsor Royals’ one in the final period for a convincing 11-4 triumph. Goaltending, which has been so good for the majority of the playoffs with the Royals, was indeed an issue for Windsor as Antigonish scored on 11 of 20 shots, while Dan Axford faced only 15 in the Bulldogs' goal.

Next game was Tuesday night in Windsor at 7:30 with Game 6 Wednesday night in Antigonish, also at 7:30.

If a seventh and deciding game proves necessary, it will be played Friday night, April 4 at the Hants Exhibition Arena at 7:30. The winner of this series goes on to play for the Don Johnson Cup and represent Nova Scotia at the Atlantic Junior "B" Hockey Championship in Charlottetown April 15-20.

The Royals had rebounded Thursday night, March 27, from an 8-2 thumping in Antigonish Wednesday evening to score a 7-4 win over the Bulldogs and take a 2-1 series lead in the best-of-seven series. Action took place before more than 600 fans at the Hants Exhibition Arena.

The Royals opened the scoring Thursday before the Bulldogs tied it, but the home team added two others and led 3-1 after 20 minutes.

Head coach Scott Roles spoke to the Royals in detail about setting themselves up for a strong second period. But that second period turned out flat for the Royals and the Bulldogs tied it at 3-3 after 40 minutes. Axford made three or four exceptional saves in the second period to keep Windsor from adding to their three goals.

The third period turned out to be a different story as the Royals scored less than a minute into the period and just kept going to notch a 7-4 win.

Chris Fearneley returned to the net for the Royals after being out with a concussion for the past three weeks and looked good and stayed sharp.

Besides a goal by captain Jeff Backman, Mark Crossman and Ryan Gale both scored a pair with singles going to team leaders Keith Burgess and Dylan Shearer. Shearer also added four assists to complete a five-point night.

The previous evening, in Antigonish, the Royals trailed 2-1 after 20 minutes before losing 8-2 by game end. Nearly 800 fans were in attendance cheering on the hometown Bulldogs.

In the first game of the series, the Royals led 2-0 after the first period March 24 in Windsor. The second goal of the first period by the Royals came on a great rushing effort by Ryan Gale, who skated from one end of the ice to the other and slipped past an Antigonish defenseman along the boards.

The Bulldogs scored in the final few seconds of the first period and the teams did little for most of the second before the Royals came alive with three goals in a 50-second span late in the second to go ahead 5-1 entering the third and final period.

One of the three goals came from Poplar Grove's Brett Mosher on a passing play.