Mar 08, 2012 | jjohnston | 911 views
Shamrock Semis 2
Our Atom AE Stars visited the bustling metropolis of Thedford Wednesday evening for game 2 of the series against Lambton Shores. We have not been very good on the road on school nights recently, but after such a dominating win in game 1, surely we would not fall flat again and let the Predators tie up the series.
Thankfully, we played a decent game and pulled off a 6-2 win over the scrappy Lambton team. We started a little slowly, but did manage to get the first goal late in the first when Darryn O took a pass from Jared Parkin and squeaked one through the keeper's legs. It took only 10 seconds to increase the lead as off the faceoff Sammy Mogk hit Lucas Glanville on the wing who fed a crisp short pass to Coleton Robison-Sareh up the middle. Coleton did the rest as he took the pass with speed, blew by the defence and put it in. It was not really a dominating period, but we did control most of the play, and came out with a comfortable lead.
The second period followed the same script as we scored another 2 goals, first by Darryn unassisted with a nice low shot off the post and in. The second goal was scored by Liam Armstrong off of a great forechecking shift by Jared and Ethan Bradley. We made the Predator's defence turn the puck over in front of their net, and all 3 of our boys dove for the loose puck, with Liam getting his stick on the puck last, tucking it past the goalie.
Lambton was not discouraged by the 4-0 deficit going into the third, and played us very hard for the entire period. We did get the first goal of the period when Tyler Johnston got a loose puck in front of their net and backhanded one over the goalie, but they answered it quickly on the power play when we failed to clear a rebound and they buried it past Markus Thompson who had no chance. Markus was not very busy, but he made a terrific glove save on a breakaway when the game was still in doubt. Carter Stephens would net our 6th of the game late in the third when he gathered the puck at the side of the net and banked it in off the keeper. Lambton, still not giving up answered again with one minute left on another rebound to finish off the game at 6-2. The Predators are missing a few players and only had two lines, but in a period where I thought we would wear them down, the opposite seemed to happen, as we lost our focus and drive a little bit, but we had done enough early in the game to ride this one home.
Most of our boys will try to wrap up the series Saturday at home, as now we will be missing some key players for March break vacations. Darryn, Mason, and Owen are deserting us for family "fun-time", so it is a great opportunity for some of our other, more than capable boys, to step up and put this one to bed. The hardest one to win is the last one, so hopefully the gang will be ready to go. Great job boys!