Goodbye Regular Season

Our final regular season night was upon us last night and the two games were going to dictate all but one matchup.  The Wolverines played the Sable to start.  With a win, the Wolverines would be able to not just get out of the basement, but sent the Sable there.  

 

The Wolverines were missing some of their talent with Josh Stevens, Jamie Richard, and Noah Joncas all absent.  These Sable were short their short leader Silas Bonnell, as well as some other players.  It was the Wolverines who jumped out to carry the play early on.  Rohan Dempsey too a feed in front of the net and converted it to put his team up 1-0 just 97 seconds in, and the pressure continued in the Sable end for much of the start of the first.  Scott Stewart made it 2-0 with his 7th of the year, and then Rohan Dempsey stole a puck and went in for a breakaway.  He deked and beat Trevor Pate to make it 3-0.

 

Jake Rankin took a penalty on the backcheck and he hadn’t even sat down by the time Carter Nickerson made it 4-0 for the Wolverines.  This was not the first period the Sable were hoping for.

 

After 2 penalties back to back in the first period, Mike Bourgeois decided to get on the scoreboard in another way, so he setup Carter Nickerson with his second of the night and his 7th of the season. 

 

At 5-0 Wolverines, you probably thought the Sable were dead, but you can’t ever count out the talented Sable players, and Brennan Ware sniped one to end Ashton Speight’s shutout with 5:49.  At 4:29 Jared Creelman got the puck in the circle and found a hole over Speight’s shoulder and we had ourselves a game.

 

Wolverines captain Jeff Snow came into the game sitting on one apple, but after an assist earlier in the game, it was time to get himself a goal, and he did that with 2 minutes and 1 second left in the regular season.  This is where we could count out the Sable, it was over, they would finish last and face the Highlanders who were sitting in first at that moment, or the Falcons if they could beat the Wolfpack.

 

While on paper, the 2nd place Falcons should have defeated the 6th place Wolfpack, their previous meeting said otherwise.  One of the Wolfpack’s 2 regular season wins came at the expense of the Falcons.

 

Playing at 10:30, the only game of the season that late, both teams had just 9 players on their benches at puck drop.  On the big ice, this was not a game either team really wanted to be playing with a short bench.  It took some time to get our first goal, and it came off a Nick Comeau giveaway.  He played the puck out in front of his goal and Dustin Hall picked off the pass.  He then collected Eli Beaton’s jockstrap and fired a shot through the 5-hole of Comeau.

 

Jory Uhlman made it 2-0 just 30 seconds later with a shot that ent short side on Comeau.

 

The Wolfpack then had themselves some extended possession and it all culminated with Rylan d’Entremont sniping yet another goal, his 11th of the season.  The 2-1 scoreline held for 4 minutes when Shaun MacIntosh, playing forward for the first time in the Nomad Hockey League, took a feed in front and nicely picked his spot just over the pad and gave the Falcons some insurance at 3-1.

 

Matt Gendron scored midway through the second period to extend the Falcons lead and game was firmly in the control of the purple team.  With just over a minute left, Rylan scored his 12th of the season, which gave the Wolfpack reason to pull their goalie in a last minute bid to come back.  Robin Gareau sealed the deal with 20 seconds left with a long distance shot on the empty net, through a pair of Wolfpack legs, the puck went just inside the post for his 2nd goal of the season.

 

With the victory, the Falcons finish first, the 3rd time in 4 summer seasons that the Falcons have taken the top spot into the playoffs, and they will be looking for their first title.

 

Our matchups for the playoffs are as follows:

Falcons (1) vs Sable (8) at 7:15

Highlanders (2) vs Wolverines (7) at 8:15

Starrs (3) vs Wolfpack (6) at 6:15

Astros (4) vs Voyageurs (5) at 9:15