The Beaver Valley Nitehawks bounced back from a forgettable effort against the Creston Valley Thundercats on Friday, with a 6-1 drubbing of the Golden Rockets Saturday.
The Hawks McKoy Hauk netted the winner and Braden Fuller had a big game scoring once and adding two assists, a night after B.V. suffered its worst loss of the season, a 10-2 clawing by the Cats.
After the Rockets Layne Hunter was given a game for a check from behind, the Nitehawks pressed on the power play, and Hauk took a pass at the point from Allan Pruss and blasted it through a screen and over the blocker of Golden goalie Keyon Bittner at 11:32 of the first period to put B.V. up 2-1.
The win over Golden marks the midway point of the season for the 18-5-1-0-2 Nitehawks that sit two points up on Castlegar for first place in the Neil Murdoch division.
Beaver Valley opened the scoring on a similar play but this time Jake Yuris took a blue line pass from Brett Roberts and blasted it by Bittner for a 1-0 lead less than five minutes in. The Rockets evened it three minutes later on their own power play when a shot rebounded off the back boards over the net and off the body of Jake Gudjonson and by Drake Poirier in the Hawks goal.
The Pruss brothers rounded out the scoring in the first period on a dazzling passing play where Allan finished a pass from Michael by wiring it off the post and in to give the Hawks a 3-1 lead midway through the period. Beaver Valley fired 20 shots on the Rockets goal in the first while Golden replied with eight shots at Poirier.
Fuller made it 4-1 when he intercepted a pass, broke through the defence and fired a shot under the glove of Bittner just 17 seconds into the second for a shorthanded goal.
Despite outshooting the Rockets 22-12 in the second, that was all they would get until the third when Jace Weegar took a perfect pass in the slot from recent acquisition Nolan Percival and wired it low just 15 seconds in. Twenty seconds later the former Nelson Leaf tallied his first goal as a Hawk, deftly batting the puck out of the air and over the shoulder of the Rockets goalie to make it 6-1.
Bittner was the Rockets star of the game stopping 49 of 55 shots while Poirier stopped 27 in the Hawks net. Fuller received player of the game for the Hawks.
On Friday Lien Miller-Jeannotte scored a goal and added three assists in Creston’s 10-2 victory. The game was tied 1-1 after the first period, but the Thundercats broke it open with four goals in the second and five in the third, outshooting B.V. 28-27. The Hawks goaltending situation also took another hit this week after Billy Gorn was called up by the Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, leaving the Hawks with just one netminder.
The Nitehawks next game doesn’t go until Dec. 8 when they host the Spokane Braves.
See more on the Nitehawks in Tuesday’s Trail Times.
