A Goalie Battle!
This game started and ended with the same story line. Both the Gryphons and the Eagles Gold wanted the puck throughout this game, and both wanted to score, but neither goalie was about to be the first to give up a goal. This game was lively and fast throughout. It was a lot to take in, in different ways... a lot of (fair) hits early, not a lot of whistles, and the summary from one Gryphon player was “that game was a lotta fun!” No real period summaries here, because it all kind of seemed to run together. The Eagles came into our end with speed, hit a few bodies to take the puck, fired the puck at Parker, and he stopped them. The Gryphons surged into the Eagles end with speed, hit a few bodies to take the puck, fired the puck at their keeper, and he stopped them. Quick breaks here and there for both teams, with Parker and the Eagles’ goalie standing up to the challenges. Early in the second Parker even had to deal with an absolute bullet from centre ice that had only just peaked at his eyes by the time it got to him; it threw the fans in the stands for a loop, but Parker handled the puck easily and played it off as well as he did all night. On the skater side of things, Cam was showing his grit in both forward and defensive corners pushing Eagles off pucks and pushing it out of our end, or towards the Eagles net throughout the night. The end of the second came as Cam was pushing into the Eagles end along the boards, he tried popping the puck in, but the Eagles popped it back at him. He threw his hip into the board to knock the puck down and pushed it forward again, and it came back again, and again. Finally, he burst through a pair of Eagles D, taking one of their sticks with him, kicking it deep into the corner, and driving to the net, firing a beauty headed for the top corner… but unfortunately, the Eagles’ keeper still wasn’t ready to let one in. The Eagles had a hard time holding on to their sticks a number of times through the night, in fact, leading to a few funny moments of Gryphons having to clear sticks to make some plays.
The third continued to see a lot of action, with Burlington soaring around our zone firing pucks at Parker, and the Gryphons returning up ice, attacking their net. At one point Max and Evan were firing pucks back and forth to each other on the blue line, seemingly, just wide around behind the net and up the boards. Late in the game, it looked like Ty might finally break the game open, as he sped towards the Eagles net free of their D, with Nolan S right there with him looking for a rebound. This one got past the keeper… but someone must have moved the net an inch to the left, because the puck rang off the post and out to the boards. The dying seconds of the game saw another Eagles flourish in front of our nets, but Parker and the rest of the Gryphs kept kicking pucks away from the net until the final buzzer sounded. A rollicking 0-0 game.
-PL