The Saginaw Spirit ended a successful month of October with a 6-2 victory over the Plymouth Whalers in front of 2,813 fans at the Dow Event Center Wednesday evening. The win vaulted the Spirit out of a third place tie with Plymouth –and into a second place tie with the Windsor Spitfires- in the west division of the OHL’s western conference.
The Spirit jumped out to a 2-0 lead after one period with goals by Justin Kea (12:52 of the first period) and Kristoff Kontos (17:58 of the first). The Spirit have had problems losing focus in the second period throughout this year; and for a short while it looked as if that were going to be the case again on Wednesday night. After a slight lapse midway through the second period, the Spirit regrouped and skated to the dressing room with a 4-2 lead, finishing strong; as they matched Plymouth’s two goals with two Saginaw Spirit goals off the sticks of Zach Bratina (15:08 of the second period) and Jeremiah Addison (16:11 of the second)respectively.
“I thought we did pretty good other than that second period got away from us a bit,” Spirit Head Coach Greg Gilbert said. “That urgency just slips away from us and we sit back and let the opposition come at us, and those guys (the opposition) just aren’t going to lay back, they’re going to keep coming at us; so, we’ve got to have that urgency for sixty minutes, other than that I thought we battled pretty hard tonight, although we still have a few area’s we could clean up, but all-in-all it was a good win tonight and the credit goes to those guys sitting in the locker room over there.”
Terry Trafford banged home an empty net goal at 16:46 of the third period to give the Spirit a 5-2 lead; while rookie, Mitchell Stephens scored the final Saginaw goal with fifty ticks remaining at 19:10 of the final period to round out the Spirit scoring.
The Spirit will be back in action Friday at the Dow, as they play host to the Owen Sound Attack; then, the Spirit will be back at the Dow on Saturday night where they will host the west division leading Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds. The Greyhounds are currently the third-ranked team in the entire OHL with 24 points, behind Erie (25) and Guelph (26). Both games are set to start at 7:11 p.m. at the Dow Event Center’s Wendler Arena.
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Nov 01, 2013
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