Last night, Spencer and Ethan threw their hockey gear in the
back of the van and after I set the GPS we were off to Tillsonburg arena to
meet up with the Tillsonburg Tornadoes 2 to play our third to last game, in the
first half of the season.
This arena has some good hockey history and fond memories for
my family, recalling some success for past teams in their tournaments. The wooden character of the arena and the
chill in the air makes you feel more connected and at one with the game.
As time was counting down to game time, coaches were growing worried about the low turnout, which would turn out to be due to congestion and traffic slow downs on Hwy 401. Just then, the door was kicked open and two carloads of players came waltzing in, to the relief of coaches and players ~ now we would have a game.
As Shawn brought in the game sheet, he shared his conversation that he had with the Tornadoes 2 coach in that they are missing five players due to suspensions. Abby and Jack asked for these players names as they may know them having played and attended school in similar centres. Sure enough, both of our players recognized some of the suspended players’ names and more importantly identified some of these players as being some of their team’s best players. This news definitely would help out our evening game odds.
Setting up the lines in the dressing room, Campbell asked the question “will Wyatt ever return to defence?” as much as I want this to happen, I needed Wyatt’s scoring power on our offensive lines and I had him subbing between our two forward lines this evening, to much success. To answer Campbell’s question my plan is to have Wyatt return to defence when Ben W returns to play in the second half of the season. Ben recently had his cast removed and it will take time for him to regain his strength and use in his hand/wrist before he is cleared to join our team in games.
During warm up, Shawn leaned over to the Tillsonburg’s bench to ask their coaching staff if they knew whether there was a chance that our game would get curfewed; as the arena only allotted 50 minutes of ice time for our game and there was a game directly after ours. They assured us that they would not get curfewed; however, remembering last year’s games I was a bit skeptical and tucked that away until the third period, to keep in mind.
As the players returned to the bench, before the start of the game, our coaching staff urged our players to skate hard and don’t hesitate to take shots at the net. Since our players have a tendency to wait too long to take a shot, as a result they often have the puck stolen from them.
Calvin was waiting to lead our cheer but our team seemed to be at a standoff with the other team who was waiting for us to complete our cheer before they had the last word and cheer to start the game. Realizing time was a commodity tonight, I jumped in to help start off our cheer to get the game on.
However, it was Calvin who really got the game going as he scored our team’s first goal with less than 3 minutes into play to allow the Wolfpack to be up by one in the game.
Mason earned his first assist of the season as he opened up the second period with a pass to Calvin who scored his second goal of the game increasing our lead by 2 over the Tornadoes.
Tillsonburg would later score in the second period to find themselves on the scoreboard and trailing Paris by one goal, that was until Calvin would score his third goal of the game with less than two minutes in play, allowing our team to end the second period with a 3-1 leading score.
Calvin had a busy game not only did he score 3 goals, earning a hat trick, but he also found time to sit in the penalty box on three occasions; unfortunately, this lead him to being ejected from the game.
In fact, Rick overheard the other bench instruct their players to instigate him to get a third penalty, knowing that he would be removed from the game. If he was removed from the game, they are removing him as a threat to their game chances. With Calvin out of the game and a man in the penalty box, our Wolfpack needed to hold off any more goals and if we had any luck, on our side, claim a fourth goal of the game to break the tie and earn a win. Our players played hard and held up half of their bargain by not giving up any more goals but were unlucky in finding any more goals in the game.
After the game, I had to laugh, as Calvin genuinely tried to apologize to Rick and I for not scoring a fourth goal of the game to earn our team a win, as if he owed us an apology for not scoring four goals in a single game.
This is what our coaching staff respect the most from our players, their never giving up attitude that is shared amongst all of our players along with not getting down on themselves or each other, no matter the outcome of the game.
Two more games this weekend, before Santa Claus comes, “Let’s go Wolfpack!”