FINAL: Saint John 6, Cape Breton 5
Marsh bookended the scoring on Thursday
as he opened things up and ended it. The rookie now has an impressive nine
goals on the season.
Marsh’s performance proved to be the
most normal thing to happen in this game. It was a back-and-forth contest with
neither team leading by more than one goal throughout. The third was especially
crazy with a plethora of minor penalties, major penalties and game misconducts
handed out after a fairly tame opening 40 minutes.
Along with Marsh, Thomas Chabot, Samuel
Dove-McFalls, Matthew Highmore and Olivier LeBlanc also scored. Blade
Mann-Dixon made his second career start and earned his first victory, making 29 stops.
The Eagles had a hat trick from Evgeny
Svechnikov while singles came from Maxim Lazarev and Loik Leveille. Francois
Brassard made 14 saves in 40:17 of action while Miguel Sullivan made 11 stops
in 15:20 of action.
Marsh opened the scoring at 5:45 of the
first period, firing the puck after accepting a drop pass from Nathan Noel.
Cape Breton tied it at 10:19 as Svechnikov connected to make it 1-1. Saint John retook the lead at 16:56 when
Chabot beat Brassard through a screen.
Shots were 10-9 Saint John in the first
period.
36 seconds into the second, Lazarev
scored to tie things up at 2-2. After successfully killing off a few penalties,
Dove-McFalls put in a Juraj Siska rebound to give Saint John a 3-2 advantage at
12:03. Cape Breton would battle back again though. Less than two minutes after
Dove-McFalls’ goal, Leveille scored to make it 3-3. But Highmore’s five-hole
goal at 16:26 put Saint John back up by one, 4-3.
Shots in the second were 10-10.
Noel
received a five-minute major and game misconduct at 11:00 following a hit on
Cameron Darcy. 22 seconds into the man advantage, Svechnikov tipped in a Jason
Bell point shot to tie it up at 4-4.
At 11:46,
Sullivan, the Eagles netminder that replaced Brassard in the second, was given
a five minute major and game misconduct for punching Highmore with his blocker. At 12:29, LeBlanc was called for diving to send Cape Breton back to the
power play. At 13:02, Svechnikov completed his hat trick to give the Eagles
their first lead of the game.
Saint John
tied it at 14:23 on a power play of their own. A LeBlanc point shot flew past
Brassard to make it 5-5. Just over a minute later, Marsh sped through the Cape
Breton defense and netted his second of the contest to put the Dogs back in
front. Mann-Dixon would keep his team in the lead the rest of the way.
Shots were
15-11 Eagles in the third and 34-31 overall.
Saint John
went 1-for-3 on the power play while Cape Breton went 2-for-6.
TURNING POINT/BIG MOMENT
I’m going to have to go with Adam
Marsh’s game-winning goal in the third period. Games don’t get much more
back-and-forth than this one.
SN PLAYERS OF THE GAME
Although he allowed five goals, Blade
Mann-Dixon came through with some really solid and key saves throughout the
game. He made some big time stops late with Saint John clinging to a 6-5 lead.
Also, Adam Marsh. The guy just keeps
producing.
STATS
- Sea Dogs scratches were goaltender Sebastien Auger (flu-ish symptoms); defensemen Braydon Blight (healthy) and Luke Green (Under-17s); and forwards Julien Tessier (healthy) and Alex Kealey (general body soreness).
- Sea Dogs assistant coach Jeff Cowan also missed the game due to sickness.
- Adam Bateman got injured from a hit in the second period. He left the game and did not return.
- The Sea Dogs continue to share the wealth offensively. Saint John scored six goals tonight and Marsh and Chabot were the only Sea Dogs with two points.
- The first 40 minutes of this game weren’t all that crazy. Things got real weird real quick in the third.
- October will end with Saint John in first place in the Maritimes Division with a 10-3-0-3 record. Impressive.
NEXT GAME
The Sea Dogs and Screaming Eagles play
each other again on Saturday night at 7 p.m. at Harbour Station.
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