Still hot from a 7-3 win over first place AON Flames Sunday, Edgewater Hotel (6-3-2) scored six unanswered goals on their way to a 6-1 win over the Klondyke Dental Molars (0-8-3) Wednesday at Takhini Arena.
“I think we skated a bit harder in the second, forechecked a bit harder,” said Shelby Workman, who got a goal and assist for Edgewater. “Our defence tends to step up pretty good. We only had three defenders tonight, so they were getting into there in the second.”
The struggling Molars, who have yet to register a win, held a one-goal lead for less than a minute early in first period, before Edgewater commenced its scoring spree, finding the mesh twice in the first and four times in the second.
“That’s a really good question,” said Adam Green, who assisted the Molars’ only goal, when asked what is wrong with his team.
“We’ve had that a couple times where we jump up and then just fall apart,” said Green.
“It’s been common, I think, in our situation; in the second period we just fall apart…
“We’ve got to change our lines or something, I think we have to start drinking an hour before the game,” he added with a laugh.
The Molars took the lead just 25 seconds into the game. Molar’s Rob Miller dumped the puck in and took a pass from Green from behind the net to score.
Things went from close to one-sided quickly in the second, with Edgewater scoring on their first two shots on net. The first of which came 2:44 into the period, with Gord Peterson one-timing a pass out of the corner to beat Molars’ goalie, Ray Davies, stick side.
“He’s been in the league like 36 years straight,” said Green of Davies. “He’s kind of an inspiration — the guy shows up all the time!”
In fact, a lack of experience was not a factor at either end of the rink, with Edgewater’s net minder, John Grant, also being rather long in the tooth.
“The goalies were only one year apart in age,” said Workman. “I don’t think there was a real advantage in net. So I guess is just came down to hard work.”
Despite facing the five-goal deficit, the Molars still had a good laugh at the end of the game. With just over a minute left on the clock, Edgewater’s Morley Lessard led a 3-on-0 rush into the Molar’s zone, but the exceptional opportunity was thwarted by an off-side call.
“That was Marty O’Hagan that went offside,” said Workman.
Edgewater’s Derek Torgerson scored two unassisted goals in the game, while teammates Rang Pillai and Brent Stokes also added to the total.
Rangers rally for win over Kilrich
Twice dropping one goal leads, Kilrich (3-6-2) continued its downward slide with its third straight loss, losing 4-2 to the Firth Rangers (6-4-1) Wednesday.
“We’re playing hard but we’re not winning any games right now,” said Brian Love, who scored both of Kilrich’s goals. “We’re losing a lot of close games right now … We’re not playing that bad, we’re just not getting lucky.”
Kilrich lost 3-2 to the Performance Centre Turbos Sunday and 4-2 to the AON Flames in the previous game to that.
“In our end the puck was just bouncing all over the place,” said Love of Wednesday’s game. “We couldn’t get the puck out half the time, we’d put it off the boards and it would hop back in.”
The game winner came with 10:04 left to play. Rangers’ Ted Hupe dug out the puck from behind the Kilrich net, feeding it out to Ron Sumanik, who fanned on his first shot, but made contact with his second, scoring from inside the crease.
“We were even-up on strength,” said Hupe. “They were missing some strong players, we’re missing some of our strong players, and it was a fight of the mediocre and we prevailed.
“We try to do short changes, like 40-second lines,” added Hupe. “It seems to be really key for us. We go out hard and we try to forecheck, and I think that was the big difference tonight. We were forechecking hard, and we didn’t really give them the chance to form their offense. They were trying to come in strong up the middle, and we were shutting them down in the centre ice.”
With just seconds left in the game, Hupe took a pass from Gary Boyd to score an empty-netter. Phil Borgel opened the scoring for the Rangers with an unassisted goal.
Contact Tom Patrick at tomp@yukon-news.com