On Tuesday night the Brock Wild hosted the always tough
Durham Crusaders.
Coming off a Wild weekend in Paisley the Wild looked a little sluggish coming out of the gate as Durham would take full advantage to take an early 1-0 lead on a shot that took several unlucky bounces to find its way behind Pardy in the Brock net.
Adomeit would get the goal back a few minutes later breaking away from the Durham defenders to snipe one past the Durham net-minder.
But Durham kept coming in waves and added 2 goals before the end of the period to take a 3-1 lead. The first goal was a quick pass from behind the net that was one-timed past Pardy. No chance to make the save. The second was a breakaway in close as the Crusader attacker would make some nice moves to get past Underwood then make a nice deke to beat Pardy on the short side.
In the second the Wild put on the pressure and were rewarded a few minutes in with a great second effort by Lo Presti to bang in a rebound to move the Wild within 1.
But the Crusaders would not back down as they fired a blast from the point that was stopped by Pardy but the rebound was banged in to extend the Crusaders lead to 4-2 heading into the 3rd.
In the 3rd the Wild continued to put a lot of pressure on the Crusaders defense but the goalie made some great saves to hold the lead.
Midway through the period it was the Crusaders who would get a lucky break as a shot from just inside the hash marks would ricochet off about 4 different players to find its way into the back of the net to extend the lead to 5-2.
Just a few minutes later the Crusaders would strike again. This time on a breakaway as the Wild tried to force a play at the Durham blueline. Pardy would make a great save on the initial breakaway but another Crusader forward following the play would get the rebound and put it just over the pad of Pardy to make it 6-2 Crusaders.
The Wild did not give up getting one more goal late in the period as Adomeit would bang one in from behind the net to close the gap to 6-3.
Unfortunately, this was as close as the Wild would get as they would suffer just their 2nd loss of the season 6-3.
The result on the scoreboard was not reflective of how well the team played.
Missing one of our key defenseman, the foursome of Totton, Wilson, Haecker and Underwood played a solid game keeping the puck in the Durham end and getting several good shots in from the point.
Lo Presti and Adomeit continued to impress with their scoring ability while Birchard, Payne and Farrell also had several high quality chances that just could not find the back of the net.
Mitchell, Beattie, Parry and Cohoon battled hard all night making several nice passes and working hard on the fore-check to create scoring chances.
Pardy was solid in goal making several nice saves to keep the game within reach.
Overall a solid effort. The Wild showed the ability to outplay their opponent throughout a large portion of the play. A few bounces going the other way and this game could easily have resulted in a Wild victory.
Keep working hard everyone!