Nanooks Sink the Lakers 5-2

First off, a big tip of the hat to Steve Thompson and Ronnie Meyers tonight. Thompson got his first start in 2 years and came up big with the win. He looked quite solid throughout the game. He allowed a pair of goals, one which I thought I'm sure he'd like to have back. I'm glad that coach played him tonight, given the situation. I thought he played very well, had so great saves, directed pucks to the right areas off of shots. Good composure, he didn't get too frantic. He had a puck flip on him and took a funny bounce over his glove and between his legs and into the net. Don't worry too much about that one Steve, you're not the first goaltender to wear a Nanooks uniform and have that happen...


And to Ronnie, way to bury it buddy. Last year, Meyers came so close to a handful of shorthanded goals, yet never had the luck for the goal horn to follow the shot. Starting off his senior year, he's 1 for 1. Nice work, cowboy.





In terms of the game, the Nanooks looked pretty good for the first 40 minutes. A lot of simple, physical, get-pucks-and-bodies-on-net-and-start-piling-on-the-goals type of game. That's exactly how both of the first two goals were scored. Garrick took the puck right off a defenders stick and buried it in the midst of a ton of net mouth traffic for the first of his collegiate career (congratulations are in order! I hope you kept the puck...). Finucci also had what amounted to be nearly a decade to shoot it seemed after taking a pass from Kunyk to wind up all alone right on the doorstep just outside of the crease in eventually what turned in to the second goal of the game. Mercyhurst's head coach had some interesting thoughts about this particular play that he shared with Danny Martin, my esteemed cohort over at the Daily-News Miner: “I wanted to vomit all over myself. It was unbelievable,” Gotkin said. “We had five guys out there, all working hard, but how dumb every guy out there is trying to slide around. We looked like an octopus trying to set up a beach chair. It was unbelievable; we had five guys on the ice out of position hoping,” Gotkin added. “It was a horrible, horrible goal; but through it all, we got to realize that we lost to a pretty good hockey team.” Although I'm not sure what an octopus setting up a beach chair would look like, but my imagination is trying to fill that in as we speak...


In the second period, in what I thought was the prettiest goal of the evening, Yaremchuk took a drop pass inside the zone from Finucci on the rush, and just took it right down Main Street, and drove it home. 


Shortly after Yaremchuk widened the lead to 3-1, it was Meyers who capitalized on a turnover created by Andy Taranto on Mercyhurst Blueliner Tyler Shiplo and came back and took it to the house. And now all of a sudden, it's 4-1. Then there at the end of the second, the Lakers cut in to the lead yet again, with Daniel O'Donoghue launching a deflected shot in the air, and was lucky enough that it started bouncing the way that it did, and making its way past Thompson for their second goal of the evening.


In the third period, I thought the Nanooks came out and tried to do too much. As coach Meisner put it, they tried to get too fancy, and got away from their game plan of keeping it simple. I'd have to agree. Whether you want to call it "too fancy" or not is one thing, but I'm going to call it "just flat". It seems like the motivation to win was removed in the span between the 2nd and 3rd. Maybe even to the effect that the players may have already thought that they had won.The Nanooks were able to cash in with an empty netter from Yaremchuk to win by a 3 goal margin and keep pace with UAA coming into today. Hopefully, we can stay above that and claim the hardware later this evening.


Anyway, I'm excited to see tomorrow's game and see where our team goes and handles everything. If you'd like, feel free to check out the post game press conference. Meanwhile, I'm going to bed. These late games kill me...