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Rota likely headed for a letter
By George Hurlbut
After a weak start and some poor power play and penalty kill numbers the Fernie Ghostriders are gradually coming together as a team and they are scoring power play goals and they have been a little better on the penalty kill as well.
The Kootenay International Junior Hockey League Riders have one line that scores almost every game and sometimes in bunches, but what we’ll call secondary scoring has been spotty.
In an overtime loss against Princeton, Dylan Rota, Dylan Robertson and RT Rice all scored but the big gunners Brendan Burge and Braeden Monk were shut out. The next night in a 4-2 win against Creston, Brendan Burge and Braeden Monk scored all of the goals; if both groups ever start scoring together regularly, the Riders could make some noise.
Well so far this season we have seen forward Dylan Rota (pictured above) on a few different lines, sometimes he’s on the first line, sometimes he’s on the fourth line, and when he goes hard to the net, he ends up on the clothes line.
Rota, who is the nephew of former Canuck Darcy Rota, takes a beating from the defense every game because he always heads straight for the net, and landing on a goalie or two just adds to the fun. Rota is not just an agitator, he has the ability to go into a scrum and end up with the puck , is able to make something out of what looks like nothing, and he can move well enough to buy time to set up plays.
Rota is 18 now but has an unusual November birthday so all his hockey life he was a few months behind the other players. Something like 70% of the NHL players are born in the first six months of the year. Dylan was playing in Dawson Creek last season with the Junior A Rage in the NAHL, but as the Fernie Ghostriders learned several years ago, the NAHL is a travel happy league and few teams can stay there very long without going broke.
So when the inevitable happened and the Rage folded, Coach Wolff offered him a spot. Judging by his skill and compete levels my guess is that Rota will end up with a letter on his jersey when the captains and assistants are finalized.
