In a game with twice as many penalties as there were goals, the Armada's special teams came out on top. This was reflected in the final score with Anchorage coming away with two much-needed points after a 3-1 victory over the Detroit Falcons
Period 1
This game got off to an extremely slow start with neither team on the board after more than nineteen minutes of play. It wasn't for lack of trying. Anchorage rookie Mika Mayfield tallied the first shot on goal for the Armada at 1:11 of the period, and Detroit answered a little over a minute later with a shot by Wolfhard Richter. Both goalies seemed impenetrable for the majority of the period, though they weren't exactly being tested at the SAT level. Detroit managed to throw 10 shots Atta's way in the first period, and Ricky Lewis had only faced 6 shots before Eero Niemi slapped the Armada's 7th shot in right off of a faceoff win to beat him glove side at 19:16 of the period.
The penalty box saw nearly as much action as the goaltenders, with Anchorage taking 3 minors --two for hooking and one for holding-- and Detroit taking 1 minor for tripping.
Score at the end of the first period: 0 - 1
Period 2
The second period was a little more exciting than the first with both goals coming in the middle of the period just a minute and twenty-six seconds apart. The first one was an Armada power play goal from Xena off of an assist from rookie defenseman Leopold Lockhart at 10:01. Despite being down by two, the Falcons had an answer at 11:27 when Marc Palicka went five-hole on Atta. It seemed like it was anyone's game to lose at that point, the Falcons proving they were still in it.
There was a lot of hooking going on in the second. The Armada took two hooking penalties to Detroit's one, but their Penalty Kill was unbeatable. Unfortunately, Detroit couldn't say the same.
Score at the end of the second period: 1 - 2
Period 3
The third period was another slow one with over fifteen minutes without a goal. And again, the penalties more than made up for the lack of action, with five calls before the first goal of the period. When that goal did finally come at 15:14, it was a beauty from Armada forward Takehiko Yukimura. Yukimura played just over nine minutes and only had the one shot on goal, but he certainly made it count.
Detroit led in penalty minutes this period, likely letting frustration get the better of them. Of the five minor penalties in the period, Detroit had two hooking minors and a roughing minor. The Armada had two calls, one for slashing and one for holding. Again, the Armada Penalty Kill held strong, and this time so did Detroit's. Score at the end of the third period: 1 - 3
And now on to the 3 Stars of the Game!
The THIRD STAR of the game with 1 goal, 1 shot, and 1 hit was Xena.
The SECOND STAR with 1 goal, 4 shots, and 2 hits was Eero Niemi.
And the FIRST STAR of the game with 25 saves from 26 shots and a 0.962% save percentage was Larry Atta.
With the Armada's PK performing at 100% on the game and the Falcon's at 75%, that 25% was all the Armada needed to give them the edge.
Our ESPN player of the game is... From the Anchorage Armada... Eero Niemi.
Eero Niemi opened the scoring for both teams at 19:16 of the first off a pass from Dean Colt III. Eero got the Armada into it and kept going with a big 4 shots on net. Which was second among all skaters in shots on net. Eero Niemi also had an impressive two blocked shots, which is quite rare for a forward to have in one game. If Eero continues playing like this the Armada may have a shot of making the playoffs and pass the Kelowna Knights in the standings.
I've recently done a piece about players with the most ice time and what they were able to accomplish. This time however, I will take the opposite approach and look at the players with the least ice time on each team and see how efficiently they used their time.
Comment 1 Tobias Viklund - 7:47 TOI
With just shy of 8 minutes on the ice, Viklund recorded 1 Shot, 3 Hits, and a face off loss. It's not surprising that Viklund is held to 20% ice time with an endurance rating of 54, one of the lower values on the team.
It might be Viklund recognized Karl Von Wittelsbach as a high value target, or it might be that he was jealous of Wittelsbach's 23 minutes of ice time, either way, Viklund hunted Wittelsbach for 2 of his 3 hits. Unfortunately, none of his hits were productive and both players hit returned the favor in turn by intercepting Viklund's passes later in the game.
Given his focus on scoring, you'd like to see more shots, but this aggressively defensive Armada made that really difficult. He took the offensive zone at least twice, but was intercepted or robbed a combined four times.
Word Count: ~146
Comment 2 Takehiko Yukimura - 9:13 TOI
Yukimura's line was supposed to only get 5% ice time, but instead came away with 22%, but with 60 Endurance, he was ready to perform. Yukimura recorded 1 goal on 1 shot, a 2 minute minor for Hooking, and a 47% FO.
We see a very efficient game here, even the shot efficiently coming 15 seconds after a Face Off win. He iced the puck once and didn't give up the puck on a HTT. Plus went almost even on interceptions for and against. While the play was certainly quick, you can't say it's sloppy.
While this was a good showing for such a small time, we haven't see Yukimura practicing or working out for over 2 months, so it's questionable if we'll see this performance lead to more ice time for the rookie.
Word Count: ~134
sig credit to myself, graphic design is my passion
Larry Atta: Why? This is actually a really hard one to decide but in the end I went with whoever has the better Save percentage because in the end that is what matters the most who let in more goals in. So Larry Atta was better than Detroit Falcons backup Ricky Lewis in that department with 96.15% to 90.63%. But on all the other statistics Ricky Lewis just had a better performance than Larry Atta. Good Save percentage of 75.86% compared to Atta with 68%. Atta also allowed every single one of his rebound to be a bad one compared to Lewis who only allowed 42.86% of his rebounds to end up in the opponents possession. Surprisingly Atta didn't let in a goal in after a bad rebound.
Thank you all for the amazing sigs & player cards
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