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WAXERS AND BLUES TIE ONE
ON In a contest which Waxers' Head Coach Russ Herrington described as being like game seven of a playoff series," the two teams battled to a 4-4 draw. "It was the best hockey game I've been at in over a year," cited Herrington. "It had everything you wanted - big body checks - ferocious forechecking - end-to-end rushes - great saves by both goalies and great penalty killing, it was there. The intensity level was there." While there were times when Herrington confessed he would have been satisfied just to be a spectator in the stands, he was happy to behind the bench and applauded his club's gritty effort. "I thought we played extremely well. We played well enough to win. We had 55 shots and we hit three posts." "At the same time they had 44 shots but B.J. Forsyth made some big saves for us." Trailing 1-0 after the first period, the Waxers dug themselves into a deeper hole when the Blues scored the first goal of the second frame to up their advantage to 2-0. The Waxers had an apparent goal waved off when the referee ruled the puck was gloved into the Blues' goal. That seemed to light a spark for the Waxers as Bryan Lachapelle and Jim Stamatopoulos delivered unanswered markers to knot the count at 2-2 after 40 minutes. The Waxers took their first lead of the game early in the third period on a power-play goal by Daniel Sisca. But the Blues retaliated with back-to-back tallies of their own to regain a 4-3 lead. That advantage was shortlived as the Waxers tied the game on a goal by Rob Bumbaco with nine minutes left in regulation time.
Opening the overtime session with a power-play advantage, the Waxers appeared to hold the edge in territorial play and had four good scoring opportunities only to come up empty handed. While the outcome ended in a stalemate, Herrington felt it was a moral victory for his troops. "We got production from all of our lines and I thought we played well as a team. The guys are starting to see that the systems we've put in will work." "The guys know how good Collingwood are as a team. (The tie) gave us a bit of a boost. I think the guys are starting to believe more and more in each other." "The effort was there, the execution was there, but the luck wasn't. That's par for the course. Anybody that was at the game went home happy." Now 15-9-2-2 on the season, the Waxers host the Thornhill Rattlers Friday night at 8pm at Centennial Arena.
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