No wifi on the bus and a late return home coupled with a Storm game this afternoon leads to a late post on the blog today.
It was a tough first period for both teams last night, a broken play led to a Kurt Johnas breakaway and he scored a beautiful goal short side on Alex Henry. Johnas is going to be a pretty special player in this league once he fills out.
Shots were 6-6 after the first 20 minutes. The first period saw numerous icings, broken plays and just sloppy hockey in general, it was a slow game with the middle bottled up.
In the second Ty Edmonds stood on his head.
That is until Tyler Grove scored on the Power play with five minutes left in the period (goal was given to Petrino but he never touched the puck).
With three minutes left in the second frame Baptiste would knock in a Kirk Chief rebound putting the Blizzard up 2-1.
The second period was controlled by the Blizzard leading on the shot clock 11-7. The Oil Capitals didn't get many quality opportunities. Most of their shots were long drives from the wing.
The third was once again the Blizzard controlling the tempo but Virden did tie things up 2-2 just 25 seconds into the third frame as Elmes was stepping out of the box.
Four minutes into the third Tim Kavanaugh lets a wrister fly from the point that hit a Virden defender and found its way past Ty Edmonds for his first real goal of the season. Kavanaugh got credit for a Valiquette goal in the showcase.
The Blizzard powerplay went 2 for 3, they're finally working things from the point with traffic and getting tip ins or rebound opportunities. They scored four powerplay goals this weekend, improving their percentage to 13.91%.
4 out of 5 points is pretty good considering the Blizzard are out three of their top six forwards and a top four defensemen.
Cochrane will be back for Wednesday as will Dumais.
TJ and Garick are still out for a few weeks.
Road trip picture blog to come.
Ocn Blizz needs to focus their games and take each game much more seriously.!! Go Blizzz Go......
ReplyDeleteI'm confused with that statement! Are you saying they were merely goofing around on the ice this weekend or are you emphasizing the importance of each game as we reach the half way mark?
ReplyDeleteIf one takes into consideration the absenties of our higher end players from this weekend and for the past 2 weeks, then I say they played very well with what we had. Bringing home 3 of 4 points kind of tells me they are taking these game seriously.
Maybe the previous poster was refering to fact that every time they score a goal the opposition seems to score a goal right after! Do they lose their focus momentarily? Or the fact that the team plays like crap in the first period and rely on the goaltender to keep them in the game until they are ready to play 100%. With a full 60 minutes of allout effort they would beat teams like Winkler and Way Way. This could be a lack of motivation from the coaching staff.
ReplyDeleteWow...I think with all the road trips, injuries and sick players that these guys have faired very well. Why do we need to look at the negative instead of encouraging and acknowledging the positive results. If we can keep our team healthy we are heading for a great outcome. For how many years have so many of us bloggers wanted positive results this season rather than focusing on the next year, well this should be the season. I agree with 8:23 3 of 4 points considering the injury list, is pretty darn good no matter who our opponents were. Brad with Dec 1 just around the corner, was wondering how it works with Jr. B cards. How many players are the Bs allowed to have on roster.
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