Hawks Fall to 0-3 in Playoff Round Robin, News, HL - Major PeeWee - C6, 2017-2018, CHL Peewee (West London Minor Hockey)

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Jan 28, 2018 | GeoffRead | 449 views
Hawks Fall to 0-3 in Playoff Round Robin
The Hawks dropped their third loss in as many games in the playoff round robin yesterday, falling 4-2 to North London A6. The Hawks were stymied by an outstanding goaltending performance by the A6 netminder, who turned aside multiple grade A chances. 

Once again, the Hawks hurt themselves by starting slowly, as North London brought the puck down the ice and scored on the first shift of the game. Goaltender Zach Read didn't have his best game and this was one that wasn't a bad goal exactly, but was one that he could have stopped. This was the theme on the night as Read didn't play poorly per se but couldn't come up with some of the timely saves the Hawks needed him to. In fairness to Read, he was clearly fighting off a virus and after the game came home, was burning up with a fever, and was sound asleep by 9 o'clock, so he probably wasn't at his best.

The Hawks also had trouble raising their play in the first, and the pushback that they came up with the day before against the Bandits took longer to come in this game. Accordingly, they gave up an odd-man rush towards the end of the first period on which North London scored to make it 2-0. 

In the second period, the Hawks pushed a little harder and generated some good chances. Matt DiCicco had an excellent chance taking a feed from Callum Knapp across the net. But the North London goaltender moved laterally exceptionally well and robbed DiCicco from in close. This same play would be repeated at least twice more as Cole Chick was similarly thwarted in the third after two nice passes from Worby.

And the Hawks might've gotten deflated when with just over two minutes to go in the second, North scored to make it 3-0.

But the Hawks, to their credit, didn't give up and Owen Worby eventually broke through taking a pass from Jacob Grover and scoring on a nice wrist shot, and the second ended at 3-1. North then scored early in the third to make it 4-1 but the Hawks rallied again as Worby drove the net hard and as he was falling hooked the puck into the short side. It was the kind of determined play and lucky break the Hawks hadn't been getting until that point.

Alas it was too little too late. In particular, the Hawks enjoyed back to back power plays, including nearly a minute of 5 on 3, on which they didn't convert. Opportunity knocked and the Hawks didn't answer the door.

If the Hawks showed a consistent flaw in this game it was a failure to drive to the net for rebounds. This was apparent time and time again but was most obvious when the Hawks' defencemen, particularly Matt Hodgins and Brendan Walsh, took some good, hard shots from the point that produced the desired rebounds but no one was anywhere near them to put them in the net. Particularly when you're struggling to score, you've got to crash the net hard hungry for those opportunities. And the Hawks really never did that in this game.

Other notes in the game: Nathan Senese did a nice job filling in on defence for a shift on the penalty kill as Walsh served two minutes for tripping; Hodgins was named player of the game for a solid bounce back effort after a bit of a rough game the previous day; call-up Miles Peterkin continued to impress with his work ethic, and was especially impressive scrapping along the boards clearing the zone on multiple occasions; DiCicco, despite ailing with a virus of his own, put in a good two-way effort; Noah Weber and Pyper Baker missed the game and the Hawks missed their steadying presence on the back end.

The Hawks have now dug themselves a hole and will need to win 5 or 6 of their remaining 7 round robin games to have a chance of advancing to the semifinals. Hopefully, with all hands on deck, they'll be able to put together a string of good games in the coming weeks.

Go Hawks go!