Santa dropped the opening puck but the North Division’s last place Storm played Grinch at Oceanside Place Saturday night as they handed the Save-On-Foods Generals’ a 4-3 loss and snapped the home team’s six game win streak.
“Oh yeah,” Generals’ head coach and GM Brent Demerais confirmed when asked if his team may have been guilty of looking beyond the North Division’s last place 8-21-2 (ninth overall) Campbell River and to tonight’s game against the 12-15-2 Glacier Kings in Comox.
“It was bull****,” the dedicated bench boss grumbled after. “There were some guys that came to play but it’s a team game. Sure, yeah, we hit five cross bars but even if we’d a won 4-3 I still wouldn’t have been happy with the win. I tried to get at least 50-some minutes of hard work a game and we got maybe 20 minutes, plus you can’t win when you’ve got players taking selfish penalties.”
In the meantime, Nanaimo lost to Comox that same night “so that was an extra kick in the groin when I got to the office and saw that . . . I’m still (angry),” he said, “but once I address it at practice tonight I’ll have to let it go.”
Shots on goal were 32-31 in Campbell River’s favour — CR outshot Oceanside 16-5 in the first period to take a 2-0 lead into the dressing room, and Oceanside answered back with an 18-8 advantage and two unanswered goals in the 2nd off the sticks of Cam McCarrick and Michael Fretz for a 2-2 tie after 40 minutes.
The Storm scored their lone power play marker 45 seconds into the 3rd and added another at 7:11 to go up 4-2. Ethan Larson (Noah Russi, James Sneddon) scored with the man advantage at 9:45 to cut it to 4-3, but that would be as close as the Generals would get.
The Gens were 2-for-3 on the power play and kept the Storm in check who were 1-7. Kiefer Giroux stopped 28 shots in net. Fretz was named the Games second star.
It was CR’s second straight win and has them at 8-22, while Oceanside slips to 13-15-2 and six points back of Nanaimo for top spot in the North.
GAME ON
Oceanside is in Comox tonight (Tuesday) to take on the Glacier Kings, and return home to ‘the Place Saturday looking to unwrap a win against Nanaimo before the Christmas break in what is sure to be a feisty festive showdown.
