It was a great defensive effort for the L/A Fighting Spirit as goaltender Claes Endre only needed to make seven saves in the 5-0 victory over the East Coast Minutemen at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee on Saturday evening.
For Endre, it was his fifth win and second shutout of the season. The Fighting Spirit improves to 11-1 on the season.
“That’s what we are trying to do is shutdown teams,” L/A Fighting Spirit coach Rod Simmons said. “That’s our goal anyways, so I think we are trying to hold teams to a certain amount of shots and meanwhile we keep coming.”
Endre’s counterpart, Aidan Critchlow made 33 saves in the losing effort. Critchlow is the brother of former Lewiston Maineiacs’ player Cam Critchlow who played with the Maineiacs in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons.
The L/A defensemen had a great night offensively as Austin Siering and Brady McNaulty each two points on the evening.
The Fighting Spirit opened the scoring when defenseman Austin Siering found the back of the net 7:30 into the contest. The assists went to Brady McNulty and Austin’s brother, Colby Siering. Simon Corriveau opened the lead up to 2-0 with his fourth goal of the season. The marker was setup by Mark Ferullo nearly six minutes after Austin Siering’s goal.
Brady McNulty picked up his second assist of the evening when he found Dylan Vrees who lit the lamp 125 seconds into the third frame. It was Vrees’ team-leading seventh goal of the season. Brett Bittner scored on the man advantage for his first goal of the season with Austin Siering had the assist, his second point of the night.
Bittner who played the Fighting Spirit last season, rejoined the team this week as he decided not to attend college in Canada. He made his season debut on Tuesday in the 7-0 victory over the Maine Wild.
L/A finished the night 1-for-6 six on the power play, while the Minutemen were 0-for-4
Corriveau notched his second goal of the contest to make it 5-0 for the Fighting Spirit. Mike Heffernan and David Fish were given credit with the assists with 7:50 remaining in the game.
Heffernan dropped the gloves with Albert Wiggins of East Coast with 24 seconds remaining in the game. Both received five-minute fighting majors and game-misconducts.
“(East Coast) got nasty with us at the end of the game,” Simmons said. “They sent players to jump ours, but I don’t know if anything will come out of it. Maybe one suspension, but we will see how it goes. Apparently that has to happen I guess, teams are going to send guys after us.”
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