On Sunday morning, Aaron Callan was just that for the L/A Fighting Spirit in a 2-1 victory over the Maine Wild at the Biddeford Ice Arena.
The Wild were 0-for-4 on the man advantage while the Fighting Spirit weren’t much better going 0-for-3.
It wasn’t easy for Callan as he stopped 38 shots, including 13 in the third period, for his fourth victory of the season with the Fighting Spirit.
“You just know it’s coming, you got to know you will be peppered with shots,” Callan said. “That’s really just it, you need to know where everyone is.”
With the Fighting Spirit leading 2-0 with under three minutes to go, Maine’s Cameron Campbell casually fired a shot on net from the blue line as the Wild were in a midst of a change with 2:43 remaining in the game. The puck deflected off a Fighting Spirit defenseman and changed directions on Callan. That was the only puck to get by him. Riley Lavoe was credited with the only assist on the play.
“Aaron Callan played very well; he got the hard-hat award,” Fighting Spirit coach Rod Simmons said. “At the end there, you don’t go hard to the puck at center ice, it becomes a turnover — bounce off our player and into the net. That’s the way it goes, a bad bounce and the initial play started at center ice, but he earned every part of it for us. That’s why we made the move for him.”
Maine had their best power play 1:43 remaining when they pulled goaltender Brandon Daigle for the remainder of the game. They had chances but the couldn’t tie the game up.
“I thought the one at the end was our best power play of the game,” Wild coach Jack Lowry said. “The seven-minute stretch there, we were terrible. I think we only had three shots, and I really think that had a huge impact on the game today.
“I thought both teams played really well, and it was a clean game up and down the ice. Goaltending was there on both ends. It came down to the power play and we didn’t execute, we just didn’t.”
The seven-minute stretch Lowry was speaking about came in the second period, as for nearly seven minutes Maine was at least a man up.
L/A’s Thomas Kuntz received a five-minute major and a game misconduct for a butt end 3:26 into the period. Maine had a brief 5-on-3 power play as JP Chauvin went off for interference. Callan stood tall during that stretch, making a flurry of saves.
Simmons considers that scenario a game within a game.
“Every situation, you try to get the guys to buy into,” he said. “It’s a lot of mini games, so if we (are) a man down for five minutes, that’s a mini game for five minutes. We took another (penalty), that’s another mini (game). When we win those little games, that gives us a boost.”
After a Fighting Spirit power play, Jonathan Donaghey gave L/A a 1-0 lead when the puck trickled past Daigle at the 14:06 mark of the second period. Matt Siegel and Dylan Vrees had the assists.
Only 46 seconds later, Chauvin’s blast from the point gave the Fighting Spirit a 2-0. Vrees and newly acquired Keagan Crawley — who has played with Central Maine Community College this season — picked up the assists.
“Goals after shifts are so important in this game,” Lowry said. “You can get the momentum back with a good shift, or you can lose it. That kind of happened.
“I thought we had a really good third period and I thought we really had a good first period. For some strange reason, the seven-minute power play took us off kilter.”
Daigle made 27 saves in the loss.
nfournier@sunjournal.com
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