July 20 – Game Recap
Gunners – 5 Rink Dawgs – 4
Our fate laid in the hands of the Dirt vs Chubby Chasers game, which was played right before ours. It was looking good midway through the second with the score tied up at 5′s and the Dirt constantly getting odd-man opportunities. But they failed to capitalize and the Chasers went on to win 8-5 and officially putting an end to our playoff chances.
As far as our game went, we gave the first place Gunners a run for their money. It didn’t look that way a minute into the game, when once again we gave up the first goal of the game. We managed to get good scoring chances and were rewarded midway through the half. Emergency call up forward, Antonio Geraci made management staff look like geniuses when in a span of 1:09 he popped in 2 goals. It was one of the few opportunities Antonio got to play forward this season and he made the best of it. He nearly got the hat-trick when he had the goalie down and out, but somehow the goalie made a brilliant save.
The Gunners came back to tie up the game 2-2, after a flurry of chances. Stewart Tymchuk once again had to make difficult save after difficult save. With just over a minute to go in the first Tommy Kolkas drew an interference penalty and on the ensuing face-off in their zone, Andrew Lazaridis won the draw clean back to Hall of Famer Dan Smith who blasted a point shot through traffic.
It was a pretty even game by half-time, with the score 3-2 for us and the shots 11-9 for the Gunners. It was a different story in the second, where it just seemed like we began to run out of gas. The Gunners kept coming and coming and we continued to let them dart in on goal uncontested. If it wasn’t for Stewart the game easily could have gotten out of reach early in the second.
By midway through the second the Gunners finally were able to break Stewart’s armor, with 2 goals in a 1:30 span. We were pretty much down and out at that point, with not much energy left. We did manage to score late, when Tommy put one in on some nice passing from Andrew Lazaridis & Mark Krupa. We were not able to get control of the ball and ran around in our end for a good 30 seconds, leaving us little time to pull the goalie. Needless to say, we ran out of time and saw another game decided by one goal.
Game Stats:
Shots: Gunners 20 - Rink Dawgs 19
Powerplay: 1 for 1
Penaltykill: none
Player(s) of the Game:
Antonio Geraci 2G
Andrew Lazaridis 2A
Tommy Kolkas & Dan Smith each with a goal
Bruce Tiam-Fook, David Silva & Mark Krupa each chipping in an assist
