Oct 23, 2011 | Steve McGeown | 815 views
First Big Road Victory! Taming the Tigers
Waterloo Timber Wolves traveled to Hamilton Sunday, and came back with two big points in their first road win of the regular season, earning a 4-0 shut-out. Lots of great firsts to report in this game.
First of all, notorious for slow starts, Waterloo Timber Wolves came out from the opening face-off win, drove into the opposing zone and blasted 5 shots on net, finally netting a goal, all before the game was 30 seconds old. Whatever our trainers did for warm-up, please do that again...
Dominic Hemphill finally put it home while the Tigers keeper still had his head spinning from the opening flurry, assists to Ryan McGeown and Owen Parsons on the play. Owen then followed that one up with a breakaway with a nice deke at the end of the play, assisted by David Gruber.
However, on this night, we would get solid contributions from all three lines. In particular, Carter Mooney had his best game of the season so far in a Wolves uniform, finding himself with several chances and finally putting home his first of the season as a Timber Wolves player, with an assist from Jackson Hurst. Preston Young would finish it off with a nice wrist shot off the inside of the post and in, assisted by Luke Ronson.
Not taking away from the scoring, or the duo of Jackson Marschuetz and Marshall Nichols shutout goaltending, the 6 defensemen really shared the first star honors. All game long, David Gruber, Conor Adams, Dylan Baumann, Max Von Hafner, Roane Morrow and Jacob Butterworth closed the gap, forcing Hamilton to only get 8 shots on net, and many of these shots forced from outside the prime shooting areas. Even on the rare occasion when it looked like a Hamilton Tiger forward was in the clear, defensemen would tirelessly chase them done and go hard on the stick to prevent the chance from emerging. Special defensive honors also to forwards Will Yagar who helped kill the majority of a 5 on 3 penalty and Jasper Peterson who was first man back defensively from his line all game.
A total team effort, and something to build upon. We are going to need that total team commitment again when the tougher Hamilton Cyclones come to town next week-end.