The Beaver Valley Nitehawks picked up four big road points with wins over the Kamloops Storm and 100 Mile House Wranglers on the weekend.
After dropping 2-of-3 the previous weekend, B.V. needed a good effort to stay in the hunt for first place in the Neil Murdoch Division and embarked on a weekend road trip to the Okanagan for its first regular season games in two years.
In 2016, the KIJHL suspended cross-conference play and reduced league games from 52 to 47. The league decided to reinstate conference play earlier this summer, with Kootenay teams playing each of the 10 Okanagan-Shuswap teams once this season.
The Hawks first trip proved to be a successful one, as the team responded by defeating the Wranglers 4-1 on Saturday following a convincing 7-2 victory over the Storm on Friday.
“It was better puck movement from our defencemen to our forwards that made the difference,” said Nitehawks assistant coach Shane Drake. “We played more as a team basically. It’s starting to come, the team concept is starting to roll.”
Hawks forward Angus Amadio scored twice and Ryan Crissali netted the winner in Saturday’s win over the 2016 KIJHL champion Wranglers.
After a scoreless first period, Amadio got the Hawks on the board with a shorthanded goal on a strong individual effort just 90 seconds into the middle frame.
Michael Hagen then set up Crissali on the power play with 5:55 to go to give the Hawks a 2-0 lead through two, while outshooting the Wranglers 22-19.
100 MH cut the lead in half when Chase Schurack scored a power-play goal six minutes into the third to spoil Noah Decottignies’ shut-out bid. Yet, Dylan Kent replied firing in his second of the season on a pass from Hagen and Nate Ingram for a 3-1 lead with 6:36 to play. Amadio struck again with 1:44 left in regulation to put the game away on his sixth tally of the season.
Decottignies made 29 saves for the Hawks, while Wranglers goalie Daniel Allin had 27 stops.
On Friday, B.V. d-man Jake Yuris ramped up his offensive game scoring once and adding two assists in the Nitehawks 7-2 victory over the Storm in Kamloops.
Yuris converted a Nathan Ingram setup midway through the first period to give the Hawks a 1-0 lead that held up through 20 minutes of play.
Bradley Ross tallied his fifth goal of the campaign 91 seconds into the second for a 2-0 lead and Kamloops got on the board three minutes later to cut it to 2-1. However, B.V. forward Simon Nemethy netted the game winner at 12:07 on a nice setup from Jared Stocks. Amadio added two more and Stocks and Kent rounded out the scoring for B.V. as the Hawks outshot Kamloops 41-20 with Jacob Romanowski earning his first win of the season for B.V.
Drake was pleased with the Hawks goaltending on the weekend, and impressed with the play of both Calgary products.
“He (Decottignies) has been great, and Jacob had a pretty good game against Kamloops, it was a good to see a bounce back game for him.”
With the wins, B.V. improves its record to 4-2-0-0, good for second place in their division behind the 6-0 Nelson Leafs. The Hawks will prepare for two weekend tilts against division teams when they host the Grand Forks Border Bruins on Friday and the Castlegar Rebels on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Hawks Nest.
Hawks Notes: Beaver Valley forward Reese Tambellini suffered an upper body injury and will miss two to three weeks of action. Tambellini has been impressive scoring three goals and six points in six games with 10 pims.
