Midgets edge ThunderStars

The Westlock Midget Warriors took advantage of the ThunderStars lack of discipline during a 3-2 win Nov. 11 at the Rotary Spirit Centre.

The ThunderStars nearly tripled the Warriors' six penalties, giving the home team a last-minute opening on power plays in the 1660 Hockey League Tier 2 game.

The ThunderStars were ahead by two goals in the first period but the Warriors rebounded in the third.

Joshua Reagan slapped in the club's first goal of the game with an assist from Jacob Reagan at 12:32.

With less than five minutes on the clock, Spencer Dunford capitalized on a power play and tied up the game 2-2 with assists from Braydie Teszeri and Ryley Booth, followed less than a minute later by Teszeri's goal for a 3-2 finish.

'I think the boys realized that we could beat this team if we could get under their skin a little bit, which we did," said Warriors head coach Rick Dutchak. 'We just kept working hard and they just kept getting frustrated, so we just kept pressuring them and it finally worked."

Taking advantage of the ThunderStars lack of focus, he said all the Warriors had to do was to stay on them.

'Really the only reason why the other team let us back in the game was they weren't a disciplined team," he noted. 'We knew that they weren't so we said, ‘as long as we keep working, they'll take the penalties.'"

Based on how he saw the ThunderStars play early on in the game, the game plan was to stay out of the box.

'You let this team take penalty after penalty, so as long as we capitalized on it, we'd be fine," he said.

The Warriors bench was short this game due to a handful of missing players and one injury in the second period, but the boys battled back as goalie Shawn Dopson kept the ThunderStars out of the net.

'I'm proud of them for that; they played a fairly clean game."

If the boys want to successfully battle other Tier 2 teams, they'll need to play a clean game. Their next shot is a Nov. 17 visit to Tofield.