Thunder shut out Flames on home ice

Tillsonburg Thunder’s Danny Attridge tries to deflect the puck past Delhi goalie Cameron Huff. (Chris Abbott Photo)

Chris Abbott, Post Correspondent

The Tillsonburg Thunder need a winning streak in the second half of the 20-game 2025-26 OEHL season.

Winning 8-0 Saturday night at home against the visiting Delhi Flames might be the first step.

“I feel like we’ve been struggling the last couple of weeks, so we just wanted to play a full 60 minutes and finish it off clean, give our goalie (Zack Johnston) a shutout,” said Thunder’s Sebastian Guastadisegni, who had two goals and an assist. “That was our goal for tonight and we did that.”

Johnston made 34 saves for his first shutout of the season.

“It was a great performance, he was huge for us tonight,” said Guastadisegni. “I thought we played good defensively as well to help him out. He gave little to no rebounds, so just an all-around clean game, which is what we needed tonight. A good team win.

“I feel like in the last couple of weeks, we’re starting to come together… starting to gel together. We had a couple tough losses, and that was weighing on us, so this was big for us and for our momentum going forward as a team. It felt good.”

Playing on the second line with Danny Attridge and Luke Sinclair, Guastadisegni said they’ve been figuring out where guys are on the ice – especially in the last two weeks.

“Going forward, we need to string a couple games, a couple weeks in a row with some wins to get back to the middle-upper half of the pack.”

Delhi goalie Cameron Huff faced 56 shots.

Veteran Thunder defenceman Mike Findlay’s assist on Guastadisegni’s second goal did not show on the scoresheet. Not surprising, his pass from the corner to Guastadisegni in front of Tillsonburg’s net was overshadowed by Guastadisegni’s spectacular end-to-end rush to score on a clean wrist shot.

Findlay, who made his Thunder debut in 08-09 (the only season Tillsonburg missed the WOAA/WOSHL playoffs), acknowledged the significant turnover from last year’s WOSHL roster to this year’s Ontario Elite Hockey League team.

“When we decided to go to this league, basically it made everyone a free agent,” the 39-year-old Findlay noted. “We lost a lot of guys.

“This was the first year that I walked into the room during camp and thought, “Who are all these guys?’ It was the first time I had ever had that, looking around, it was like ‘I don’t know everybody… this is crazy.’

“But everybody’s been great, we’re getting along really well.”

Findlay said the team’s goal as they push to make OEHL playoffs – and make some noise in the playoffs – is to ‘figure out what we’re good at.’

“We have to outwork teams. We don’t have the offence that we’ve had in the past. We have to find different ways to win. But we also have unreal goaltending, so if we can get it figured out, our goalies are going to take care of the net, we take care of our end, then the offensive end will take care of itself. That’s the plan – we have to collectively figure out the back end first.

“We have a pretty fast team. If we outwork them, first on pucks, we’re a tough team to play. But we’ve got to get it in their end, get more pucks on net.”

TEDDY BEAR TOSS

Tillsonburg Thunder host Milverton Four Wheel Drives on Saturday, Dec. 13th for their annual Teddy Bear Toss game. Puck drops at 7:30 p.m. – bring stuffed toys to throw to the ice when the Thunder score their first goal. The stuffed toys will be donated to families in need over the holidays.

Thunder 8, Flames 0

Thunder scoring: 1. Andrew Oosterveld (Braden Roberts, Jaden Vansevenant); 2. Derek Slaght; 3. Roberts (Kurtis Heggie, Mike Stolar); 4. Sebastian Guastadisegni (Danny Attridge); 5. Oosterveld (Roberts); 6. Symon Reddin (Heggie, Attridge); 7. Guastadisegni; 8. Attridge (Guastadisegni, Heggie).