The Melfort Mustangs used a potent power play to knock off the Nipawin Hawks 4-3 in overtime in both teams’ Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League season opener in Melfort.
The Mustangs finished the night on Sept. 15 3-for-4 with the man power advantage, which Trevor Blevins, the Mustangs’ head coach, said was a direct result of getting pucks to the net.
“We had a lot of a shot focus. I really thought we did a great job of moving it around too and creating confusion and opening up some shooting lanes.”
Special teams played a big factor in the result of the contest admitted Doug Johnson, the Hawks’ head coach, whose team finished the evening 0-for-4 on the power play.
“I have to put a lot of that blame on myself where we focused on a few other things during our practices and obviously it bit us in the butt,” he said. “We just thought we’d get some other things taken care of and obviously it didn’t work the way we wanted it to.”
Tanner Zentner scored the game’s opening goal at 2:09 of the first period, and Jaxon Joseph stretched the Mustangs lead to two goals with a power play marker at 14:16 of the first period.
The Hawks then pushed back in the second as Austin Mikesch and Jordan Simoneau both found the back of the net to send the game into the third tied at two.
The Hawks carried the momentum of their two second period goals into the third scoring 27 seconds in, but they could not hold the lead, as the Mustangs pushed back scoring the tying goal with 1:57 to play.
Blevins was pleased to see his team continue to push for the equalizer. Despite failing to score on a number of chances earlier in the period they did not quit, noting those are great qualities of a more experienced character hockey club.
“For us to be able to stick with it and not give up, we had a lot of push in our game and I think that just comes with this group being that much older and more experienced. And we found a way to tie it up late, which was huge for us.”
The Mustangs then put the game away with their third power play goal of the game off the stick of Loch Morrison at 1:58 of overtime.
Johnson noted it would have been nice to be able to pick up the win, but admits he felt like there was a bit of a missed opportunity to get two, after giving up the late third period marker, noting the Mustangs made a great play, but the Hawks also handed them the chance.
“We had a terrible d-zone breakdown, we had a missed opportunity on a breakout. There’s just a lot of things that happened before the goal that we could have done differently to eliminate it. So we learn from it and go from there.”
Evan Plotnik picked up the win in goal for the Mustangs turning aside 26 of the 29 shots he faced, while Lance Alm was charged with the loss in his first career SJHL start allowing four goals on 31 shots.
