The Twin City Thunder’s inaugural season is over.
The South Shore Kings swept the Thunder with a 7-3 victory in game two of their first round playoff matchup Sunday night in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
Kade Kaminski had two goals and two assists to lead the Kings into the second round of the playoffs. Artem Mateyehenko and Joseph Schaefer each had a goal and two assists.
“I think we did a little better than the night before, but the Kings are a strong team. We dug ourselves a little bit of a hole again tonight ” Thunder coach Doug Friedman said. “We got down 4-1, but I will give our guys credit, they battled back. We got two goals to make it 4-3 with (our) third goal coming with a second left in the second (period).”
South Shore opened up a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes as Dash Quartarolo scored just past the midway mark of the period while Huck Sorock scored with 2:47 remaining in the period.
Kaminski who assisted on both goals in the first period stretched the Kings lead to 3-0 with 35 seconds into the second period.
Zachary Desmarais put the Thunder on the board right at the eight minute mark with Derric Trudeau setting the goal up.
Schaefer restored the three goal lead for South Shore with 3:06 remaining in the period.
Zachary Simpson found the back of the net for the second straight game for the Thunder with 2:13 remaining in the second period. Etienne Crousle literally beat the buzzer as he scored with one second remaining in the period. It was also his second goal of the weekend. Trudeau picked up his second assist of the night.
The Kings scored in the opening minute of the period again as Curtis Judd found the back of the net 50 seconds into the third period.
“The first two, last two (minutes) of each period, you don’t want to let anything up,” Friedman said. “It’s the same problem we had yesterday, it’s tough, it can be deflating, especially you are going to the third period giving up a goal like that.”
Mateyehenko scored ten minutes later on the power play to give South Shore a 6-3 lead.
The Kings were 2-for-10 on the man advantage while the Thunder were 0-for-3.
The power play came when Desmarais was called for a two minute minor for hooking and received two 10 minute unsportsmanlike misconducts and also was disqualified for the remainder in the game. Cody Doyon also received two ten minute misconducts. One was for unsportsmanlike and the other was for abuse of officials. Both Desmarais’ and Doyon’s penalties came at the 8:50 mark of the third period. Simpson also received a two minute unsportsmanlike penalty at the 9:27 mark.
“We will call it teachable, learning moments for some of our guy” Friedman said. “Unfortunately the timing for it wasn’t great, but we will have discussion on it and our guys will learn from it. There was some frustration going on and officiating was a little inconsistent for both teams. That played into it as well.”
Kaminski added his second goal of the game with 25 seconds remaining in the game.
Derek Fournier made 32 saves in the loss while Jake Horoho made 27 saves.
Wind knocks out power forces cancellation of Nordiques game after the first period
With the L/A Nordiques leading 6-0 after one period, the game against the Niagara Falls PowerHawks at the Hockey Outlet in North Tonawanda, New York was canceled after wind gusts knocked of over 75 miles per hour knocked out the power in the arena.
Right in the first intermission, the power kept going in and out,” Nordiques head coach Cam Robichaud said. “For safety precaution, we can’t have guys out there with the lights going in and out. There’s pretty strong winds here, 75 mile per an hour plus winds. It’s a big storm, so we had to call the game.”
The arena staff told the Nordiques Saturday night that losing power would be a possibility with the incoming storm on Sunday. They said the building is often the first in the area to lose power in a storm.
The game won’t be rescheduled and Robichaud said the Nordiques will be rewarded the two points. He’s unsure if the game will go down as a 6-0 final or a 1-0 victory by forfeit. That determination will be made by the NA3HL league office.
As for the first period, the goals scored were evenly split among defensemen and forwards. On the back end scoring were Donovan Tehan, Matthew McDermitt and Hans Watson. The three forwards who found the back of the net were Zack Mullen, Sergei Anisimov and Joshua Sanchez.
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