(Game #80)Prince George Firebirds 4 @ St. Louis Scarecrows 2

St. Louis, MO – The 80th game of the SMJHL season brought us the 6th incarnation of the Prince George Firebirds vs. the Scarecrows of St. Louis. PGF leads the season series 4-1, with two of those wins coming in extra time. In a game where fans were ready for a premier matchup in net between the two most exciting goaltenders in the sport, Prince George’s Ben Waters and St. Louis’ Kyle Wahlgren, we once again were unable to get that matchup due to the internal team suspension of Wahlgren by the Scarecrows. Wahlgren would actually become a factor later on in this game, but we’ll get into that soon.

The first period of our game started off pretty one sided, with Sven Wolf taking a double minor for high sticking about a minute into the period, and then Hunky Monkey’s Elbowing penalty 30 seconds later led to a full two minutes of 5 on 3 action. But Ben Waters was up to the task, keeping the Scarecrows off the board during the two man advantage. However, St. Louis finally broke though before Wolf could get out of the box:

Quote: Willy Mack will be taking this faceoff against Riccardelli in the St. Louis zone. St. Louis has already had a two man advantage in the period and Waters has shut them down. There’s about a minute left in the double minor to Wolf. You have to wonder how it’ll affect the St. Louis’ players mentality if they don’t get at least one after all of this. Here we go now, puck is dropped and the draw is won by Mack back to Kelly Rivet. Rivet with it now and will send it up to Landry. DarryL Landry now taking the puck over the line and holding it just inside the zone. He’ll look for a pass as St. Louis sets up their power play. He sends it across to Rivet. Rivet, back to Landry. Landry fakes a shot and sends it back to Rivet. Rivet sends it down near the halfwall to Escobar. Escobar takes a step towards the middle of the ice and lets the shot go. HE SCORES! Scott Escobar gets the first goal of his career on the Power play, and St. Louis has finally solved the Ben Waters puzzle to go up 1-0.

Escobar’s first goal from Rivet and Landry would come at 4:14 of the first period. But as they usually have all season, Prince George would not go quietly into the night, tying the game up six minutes later:

Quote: Feist about to take the draw against Watkins in the Prince George zone. He’s been kicked out of the circle and Feist is exchanging some words with the linesman. Akeson steps in for him. Puck is dropped now, and Watkins wins it cleanly to Hertzberg. Hertzberg knocks the puck back to the defenseman Kottbulle. Kottbulle takes it behind his own net as he looks for a breakout pass. He sends it up to Obrana, who takes up into the neutral zone. Obrana has the puck knocked off his stick around center ice but he gets it back again and takes into the St. Louis zone. Obrana makes a nice move to get by his man and starts heading for the net. He fakes his shot and slides it across to the winger and they score! It was Hertzberg on the one timer from Obrana, and the game is tied 1-1.

Hertzberg gets his 6th of the season from Obrana and Kottbulle, and Prince George has things knotted up. But the tied game wouldn’t even last a minute. With another Firebird penalty in the first period, this time on Toms Shnekinsen hooking call, it would be the Scarecrow power play that breaks the tie:

Quote: Eugene Feist in to take another draw here in the Prince George zone against Kevin Sousa. Sousa had the overtime winner a few games ago between these two teams. The linesman lets the puck go and its Feist winning the draw back to Rivet at the point. St. Louis setting up the power play in the zone now as Rivet looks for a pass. He’ll find one as he sends the puck over to Akeson. The puck pops over Akeson’s stick but he gets back before a Firebird can knock it away. Akeson makes a nice move on the defender and takes a shot from the faceoff circle. Kurczewski standing in front of Waters and he deflects the Akeson shot wide. Puck bounces back towards the point, Prince George unable to get to it to get it out. Rivet with it again fakes the pass over to Akeson and shoots the puck instead and he scores! Kelly Rivet on the power play beats Waters five hole and with the second power play goal of the period, the Scarecrows take a 2-1 lead!

If you thought the Scarecrows’ lead was safe, you haven’t been watching the games between these two teams this season. Prince George would tie the game up at 2 with almost a power play goal of their own:

Quote: Casper Jakobsson lines up against Escobar for the faceoff inside the neutral zone. Only a few seconds left in the Diablo penalty. Jakobsson wins the draw back to Kottbulle. Kottbulle skates the puck into the zone himself, and sends it across to Jakobsson. Jakobsson with it now, takes the shot and misses the net. He wins the battle in the corner for his own rebound as Diablo steps out of the box, power play over. Firebirds changing as Jakobsson still has the puck. He’ll skate towards the high slot and takes a shot and THEY SCORE. The puck hit someone in front of the net and deflected past Happanen, and this game is tied at 2 a piece.

That “someone” would be Riccardelli, as the Jakobsson shot bounces off the inside of his leg and deflects past the goaltender. His 4th of the season draws the Firebirds even. That’s how we’d end the first period. Some games don’t have as much as action as the first twenty minutes of this game did. As the second period began, this time it was the Firebirds that came fast out of the gate, as they took a 3-2 lead just 51 seconds into the period.

Quote: And we’ll have a draw here in the St. Louis zone after the icing call on Rivet. Levi Watkins takes the draw against Jason Visser. They tie each other up for a moment, but eventually Watkins smartly kicks it back to Hunky Monkey. Monkey skating with it now and sends it across the ice to Hertzberg who has the first Prince George goal today. Hertzberg looking, slides it over to Selich. Selich fakes a pass and then takes a shot, its deflected and they score! Karl Hertzberg gets his second goal of the night and that gives the Firebirds their first lead of the night, 3-2.

Hertzberg gets the deflection after he goes hard to the net right after the pass to Selich, showing that hard work pays off in this league. His 7th goal, from Selich and Monkey would give the Firebirds a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. What they would do though, is get another one of their own.

Quote: Foster dumps the puck down into the Prince George zone as the Scarecrows go off on a line change. Hunky Monkey is back to get the puck from behind the net and he starts back up ice. Monkey passes the puck up to Riccardelli in the neutral zone. Riccardelli makes a quick pass across the line to Shnekinsen. Shnekinsen winds up and takes a shot and its deflected by Boone, but the Boone deflection is blocked by the leg of DarryL Landry. The puck bounces towards the point AND THEY SCORE AGAIN. This time it was Savage who wasted no time shooting the puck off the rebound from the Landry block before Happanen could get set, and it found the open net. 4-2 Firebirds here in St. Louis.

With their team down 4-2 and looking uninspired, the Scarecrow faithful started to cheer. Lets go back to the play by play.

Quote: And with St. Louis down by two goals, I don’t know why the fans are cheering. Oh! There’s movement on the bench. It looks like Kyle Wahlgren is getting put into the game! The Scarecrows pull Happanen who allowed 4 goals on 12 shots and bring in their first quarter of the season MVP. I guess we’ll finally get the goalie matchup everyone wanted.

And the goalie battle was something we did get even if it was too little, too late for the Scarecrows. Wahlgren would stop all 11 shots he faced, including some amazing “did you see that?” glove saves. Not to be outdone, Ben Waters, who already looked sharp, kicked his game up a notch once his rival touched down on the ice. Both goalies would go on to not allow a single goal in the final 32:57 of the game, and Prince George would go on to win 4-2. Let’s look into our next level stats here:

Shots
STL: 17
PGF: 23

Hits
STL: 19
PGF: 12

Faceoffs
STL: 38
PGF: 42

Blocked Shots
STL: 9
PGF: 4

Penalty Minutes
STL: 8
PGF: 14

The stats show us that this game wasn’t even as close as it seemed. Prince George outshot and won more faceoffs than the Scarecrows, and dominated 5 on 5 possession as a result. Had the Firebirds not racked up 14 penalty minutes, there’s a very good chance St. Louis may not have had any goals at all considering both tallies were on the PP. While it was a completely different game once Wahlgren got in net, its too hard to say how different the score would’ve been had he started it from the beginning.

Three Stars

1. Karl Hertzberg (2 goals). An easy decision here, as Hertzberg’s efforts landed him the GWG and he also got the first goal for Prince George to tie the game at 1.

2. Joseph Riccardelli (1 goal). Riccardelli had a lovely deflection goal that tied the game at 2. On top of that, he was a PK machine, preventing multiple STL opportunites with the man advantage.

3. Tapper Kottebulle (2 assists). Kottbulle was everywhere on the ice tonight, playing over 22 minutes, including 4:38 on the PK, most on the team. His two assists were secondaries, but they were both on the first period goals that prevented the game from swinging too far in the Scarecrows’ favor.