March 03, 2010 – Game Recap
Rink Dawgs – 4 Team Sleazy – 4
The Rink Dawgs came out like gangbusters, peppering the opposing goalie with a flurry of shots. They had a ton of good scoring chances, but it took almost 10 minutes before they got on the board. At the 5:35 mark Antonio Geraci redirected a shot from Martin Vieira, with the other assist going to Tony Rowe. Then 2 1/2 minutes after opening the scoring, the Rink Dawgs struck again. When Joe Lucas converted a passing play from David Silva & Tommy Kolkas. The first period ended 2-0 in favor of the Dawgs, with the shot totals also on their side 13-5.
Maybe a little too confident that they could continue to carry the play to start the second period, the Rink Dawgs slowly allowed Team Sleazy to build some momentum of their own. Sleazy got on the board at the 11:30 mark of the period, with a bit of a lucky goal. When on a shot from the point, Rink Dawg defenceman Navin Persaud had it go off his stick and passed third string goalie Gino Caputo.
Gino was filling in for the ailing Eddie Mirzadeh and did a real good job, especially in the first 2 periods stopping 14 of 15 shots. His steady goaltending allowed the Dawgs to play with the lead, problem was they started to turn the ball over too much in the neutral zone. They seemed to correct that problem with just over 4 minutes to go, when from his own zone Tony Rowe riffled a pass up the left side boards hitting David Silva in stride, and following up David was Carm DiLuciano, how took the pass and made a beautiful move to split the defence and while going down slid the pass across to Joe Lucas who made no mistake for his second goal of the game.
The final period was all Team Sleazy, who outshot the Dawgs 15-8 and managed to score 3 goals in a span just over 3 minutes. The first was a powerplay goal, an area that the Dawgs have been struggling with allowing 5 goals on their last 7 opportunities. Just over 2 minutes after that goal they managed to tie the game 3-3, when on some miscommunication between Gino, Tony & Carm lead to a turnover that they converted. Sleazy took the lead only 55 seconds later, when on a delayed penalty against the Dawgs, Tommy Kolkas stopped playing for a moment as he was upset with the call, this allowed #83 of Team Sleazy to squeeze a shot top corner over Gino’s glove.
Down but not out, the Rink Dawgs were desperate to turn up the pressure. The rest of the game the play was in Team Sleazy’s zone, with the goalie pulled the Dawgs managed to get a face-off deep in their opponent’s end. Calling a time-out to set-up a play, the Dawgs managed to tie the game with only 1:07 left to play. Some hard work on the boards by Ted Kolkas paid off when he stepped towards the goal and ripped a shot low passed the goalie.
The game began to get real chippy and then #16 from Sleazy jumped in as the 3rd man on a skirmish between Rink Dawg Andrew Lazaridis and another player. This got everyone on the floor involved, with all the Dawgs trying to get at #16. No players dropped their gloves but anticipating the worst the Referees ended the game with 28 seconds to go, thus ending the game 4-4.
All in all the Rink Dawgs played a good disciplined game, it looked like they began to run out of gas midway through the 3rd period but managed to fight back to earn a valuable point in the standings. With only 3 games left to play in the regular season, they need to work on their penaltykilling and cut back on turnovers in their own end and neutral zone.
Game Stats:
Shots: Rink Dawgs 28 – Team Sleazy 28
Powerplay: 1 for 1
Penaltykill: 2 for 3
Player(s) of the Game:
David Silva 3A
Joe Lucas 2G
Tommy Kolkas 2A
Gino Caputo 22 saves
