   
        |
|
Andrew Self
attempts to park himself infront of Rangers' netminder Dan Turple.
They're the only team in the OHL's Eastern division thus far to leave Kitchener with a victory, in the entire Eastern Conference only one other team (Toronto) has gone into Kitchener and won a game. For the Rangers that matchup in Kitchener was filled with missed opportunities, that and torment by netminder Kevin Lalonde. The Rangers dodged Lalonde as he has not been dominant of late, early in their previous weekend he was chased after a pair of first period goals against the Storm (more as a move to shake the team up) and then on Friday night, the Bulls dropped a 3-2 overtime decision to the last-place Oshawa Generals. With that loss in mind and Lalonde's early departure against the Guelph Storm in mind George Burnett elected to run with the hot hand, in this instance Sebastien Dahm. The Rangers' real nemesis during their last meeting with the Bulls was penalties and two man advantages. Cutting down on penalties would be key. Something that official Terry Hobor co-operated with as he called an extreme few penalties. Something of note though was that Boris Valabik must have missed the memo on the whole keeping the penalties to a minimum initiative. The Rangers were shorthanded 5 times and he took 4 minors, only one of which was coincidental. Thus far this weekend officials have not shown an interest in calling a high number of penalties, thus having teams involved in a game that has specialty teams at the focal point. This game, moreso as it progressed started to be slowed by hooking, and interference infractions which went undetected. After failing to score in four consecutive periods it was the Rangers' 4th line that broke them out of the funk and finally got them on the board in this game. Kevin Henderson, Nick Spaling and Cory Konecny who seldomly assemble anything other than a great effort were hard at work just after an early power play had expired and Nick Spaling was able to find Konecny infront for Konecny's 10th goal of the season and a 1-0 Rangers' lead. Those very same fowards would be on the ice when the Rangers who were finding opportunities throughout the second period finally got a little luck when Matt Lashoff's shot skipped awkwardly and past Sebastien Dahm who seemed terribly confused in the Belleville goal, not even reacting to the shot. Only minutes later Matt Auffrey was able to connect on the power play breaking the game open at 3-0 Kitchener. Through two full games this weekend Auffrey's marker was the only power play goal scored with a single game left in Ottawa on Sunday afternoon.
Unfortunately for some of the 2,866 paying spectators, the Bulls didn't really show much in the way of life in the third period. At times it appeared as if they were the team guarding a 3-0 lead, not the team trying to come back from such a deficit. The Bulls on many occasions put the puck into the Rangers' zone on delayed offsides, they also mixed in a number of icing calls to maintain some variety. Full credit where due, the Rangers weren't allowing Bulls players into the zone very easily and they were also employing a strong forecheck. With fans already starting to file out of the building Kyle Jukosky snapped the Ranger's shutout with exactly 3 minutes left. The Bulls would go on a fruitless power play only seconds later. With their netminder out in favour of an extra attacker, Evan McGrath found the back of the Bulls' net with a hard wrister for a 4-1 final. Kevin Henderson was the second star of the game, he had a pair of assists and worked tirelessly. Dan Turple who shut the Bulls out through 57 minutes was named first star. Sebastien Dahm had a very good game minding Belleville's net but his performance didn't merit a three-star selection. . |
