Game #6, away vs Pointe-Lévy Fém-1
While he had hope he'd be able to play on Sunday night, Sam still was a no go. Max and Alex Fo were back in the lineup and with the game being against the girls, I wanted to give a shot at one of my affiliates to ease him in. This went unreported until now but yes, last Sunday (10/26) I went to scout the Pointe-Lévy-2 Bantam A team in hope of finding an affiliate or two. The Bantam CC team has first shot at protecting players as affiliates and I had asked their coach for his list of untouchables and after that, I need to check with the player if the other Midget B team has approached him or not. I signed three players as affiliates on that night, Jacob, a goalie, Oliver, a defenseman and Jeffrey, a forward. I cannot have an affiliate play for us if have a full lineup. That meant with Sam out, I could call up one.
Since a forward would be missing, I wanted to play Jeffrey on Sunday but got some bad news when I talked to his dad. Jeffrey had fallen on the ice during practice on Friday and he had a hairline fracture to his tailbone. He had even missed the game with his own Bantam A team on Saturday. Oh well, his presence wasn't absolutely necessary, with only one player out, but it reminded me that I had to sign a couple more just in case.
As a matter of fact, the Pointe-Lévy-1 Bantam A team was playing their game right before us on Sunday evening and Andrew and I got to the rink maybe a full hour before our game in order to scout some players. In the few minutes I had between their game and ours I was able to talk to the coach and kinda unofficially sign one of their forward.
Now on to the game against the girls. That game made me nervous. I had seen them hold their own against Pointe-Lévy-2 a few weeks back. It was only 3-2 for Pointe-Lévy-2 at the start of the 3rd period. I was nervous we would fail to score and see them get a lucky goal and us crumble down...
We started again kinda slow but scored after 2:30. After that goal, we kept very much in control of the tempo of the game. I wanted to find a parent to help me out with stats during the game and with all three of my assistant present at the game but only two on the bench, that was the game to implement it. Namely, I wanted to get shots on goal, and as a side, I could use the +/- stats, or at least an idea of who was on the ice when we scored or when we got scored on.
To tell you how much we were in control, we outshot them 14-7 in the first period. That's usually not the kind of thing that happens to us...
We had our usual lull to start the second period. Not too bad but we allowed them to shoot on goal a bit more. We doubled our lead in the fourth minute then faced a penalty kill situation in which they shot something like 7 or 8 times in a 30 seconds stretch but the thing is, all these shots were from the outside, or from the blue line and Andrew was stopping and then freezing the puck for a new face off every time. I don't mind these kinds of shots.
And then the wheels completely fell off the wagon for the girls in the third period. We put 27 shots on goal in that period alone to their only 4 shots. Four more goals went in for us, none for them. Shutout for Andrew!!!
Final Score:
Commandeurs-1: 6
Pointe-Lévy Fém-1: 0
A good win that showed how solidly we could play defensively. Could we have scored more than "only" 6 on 60 shots? Yeah, maybe, and it still was "only" against the girls, but I was pretty happy with the win.
Andrew wasn't really challenged but he still had to make a couple of nice saves to earn his shutout. One of them had him in a split after the puck was deflected something like 3 times in front of him.
Guys who had a good game for us, stats wise:
Chris, 1 goal, 2 assists
Max, 2 goals
Alex Fo, 1 goal, 1 assist
David, 1 goal, 1 assist
FM