Our Wolfpack hosted the Tillsonburg Tornadoes on Sunday,
Feb. 3, 2019, yes on Super Bowl night, to the dismay of some, including a
Tillsonburg mom I overheard ask a rhetorical question to her friend, “who
schedules a game on Super Bowl night?”
The answer would be Paris ... and that is because we are more of a
hockey town than a football town, plus we already knew New England was going to
win the game.
It was quickly apparent to see that Tillsonburg takes football just as serious as hockey, as we counted only 7 skaters and a goalie during warm up. I am assuming the rest of the team decided to stay behind to watch the Super Bowl game, which was aptly named Super Bore LIII. Since, the only touchdown in the game came late in the fourth quarter in the game. This would have given Tillsonburg players and families enough time to have played our game, drive home, pour a drink, put their feet up and watch the tail end of this game and see every point earning play in the game.
Our Paris team had a full bench and we were hoping that we were going to wear the Tornadoes down in the later part of the game with their only 2 spares. Incredibly, Tillsonburg paced themselves very well, in fact, 5 of their 7 players took the liberty of finding extra rest by taking a penalty, at one point of the game, so they can sit out an additional 2 minutes.
It is safe to say that our Wolfpack team had an off night, a good reason for this was that we were missing four of our top forwards including, Jaden, Jonah, Josh and Lucas which set us back with scoring. This also caused for changes on our forward and defensive lines and before our players were settled in with their new line mates, Tillsonburg had a two goal lead by the end of the first period.
Paris bounced back in the second period and dominated the play, in fact, we only allowed one direct shot on our net, in all of the second period. More importantly, our team scored back to back goals at the tail end of the second period to tie up the game before starting the third period.
Our first goal was credited to Kaleb who picked up a rebound shot of Deryk’s and buried it in the back of the Tornadoes net minder. Less than 2 minutes later Josh R. stick handled and skated through the Tillsonburg squad and cleanly deeked out their goaltender in what would be described the goal of the game. This was Josh’s first goal of the season and one that he and everyone at the game will remember.
The third period could only be described as a different game, Tom Brady may have deflated footballs in the Super Bowl but Tornadoes definitely deflated Wolfpack’s chances of a win as Tillsonburg dominated the play and earned 4 goals to secure a strong win against our Wolfpack.
Our Wolfpack has a chance to redeem ourselves as we next play this team on Thursday, February 21st as we visit them in Tillsonburg.
Congratulations to Fletcher Adam for being named ‘Player of the Week.’
Go Wolfpack Go!
Kevin Noseworthy