Mar 12, 2018 | GeoffRead | 760 views
The Little Ball of Hate Scores Game-Winner as KnightHawks Roll to 3-1 Victory
The KnightHawks played the Bandits 43 last night and won 3-1. In the process, a legend was born. Kayden Keating, who plays with the sort of wild abandon that has earned him the nickname, "The Little Ball of Hate", roared in alone on the Bandits' goaltender midway through the second period, beat him to the puck, and deposited a raging shot to the glove side to put his team up 2-0. Keating's goal stood up as the game winner as the KnightHawks hung on to win 3-1.
The Little Ball of Hate provided the game's most exciting play, but this was a team win. First, the previous match against Bandits 43 had gotten out of hand, and so the coaches gave the KnightHawks a talking to about keeping calm and focused, emphasizing that the best way to make a statement was to win the game the right way, cleanly, and by outworking their opponents.
The KnightHawks heeded these words and played a good hard but clean game. Indeed, there would have been no penalties from the KnightHawks' side at all had player of the game Zoe Read not taken her first penalty of not just the season but her playing career, with about 5 minutes to go in the third. Read's historic penalty was for tripping, as she had reached out on a Bandits' player at their blue line in an attempt to strip the puck, but had swept the Bandits' player's legs out from under him accidentally in the process. Read was nonetheless honoured with player of the game honours for a hard-working, hustling effort, in the course of which she also picked up an assist on the KnightHawks' first goal.
The game was tense and hard-fought. The teams took turns creating chances with hard forechecking efforts and both clubs had difficulty breaking out at times. But when the Bandits had chances, goaltender Kaelan Walsh, with one of his strongest outings of the season, stood tall and kept his team's head above water.
Then, about midway through the first, Read, Sam Schafer, and Jack Peterkin buzzed the Bandits' net with Schafer and Read digging in the corners. Finally, they worked the puck out front where Peterkin picked it up and fired it in past the Bandits' goaltender. All three members of the line earned points on the play in a sign of the good teamwork the trio had displayed.
The Bandits fought back, however, and clanged a shot off the post just minutes before Keating scored his memorable goal. Then, early in the third, on a nice individual effort, Troy Price split the Bandits' defence and got a seeing-eye shot off that picked the bottom corner to give his team a commanding 3-0 lead. Curiously, Owen Askew, according to the scoresheet, picked up an assist on the goal despite vacationing in Florida. Upon video review, the official scorer has changed that assist and given it to Aiden Hayes who had headmanned the puck out of the KnightHawks' zone. A second assist went to The Scottish Devil, Connor Devlin, on the goal.
The team's defence corps also deserves a mention, as they employed a bend but don't break strategy. The KnightHawks got hemmed in their own end a few times but Anderson Watt, Brandon Miles, Paul Steele, and Hayes did a good job of keeping the Bandits to the outside, thereby denying them access, mostly, to the middle part of the ice where the best scoring opportunities are generated. With most of the shots coming from the periphery, the solid Walsh could be counted on to make the save.
It was just as well that this game didn't get physical as the previous match had done, as Greg the Impaler Nicolis continued to sit out for personal reasons. Without the Impaler at work, the Scottish Devil had a chance to tie or pass him in the race for the team lead in penalty minutes (6 minutes and counting), but the Devil played a clean game and couldn't close the gap. Although Read threw her hat in the ring, she seems an unlikely challenger for the heavyweight belt, so to speak.
Great game KnightHawks.
Go KnightHawks go!