Nico Armellin makes an outstanding save on Joshua Lepain’s breakaway during the St. Marys Lincolns’ 3-2 win over the London Nationals on Dec. 6. Armellin made 29 saves, 15 of which came in the third period, to backstop the Lincs to their first of two wins at the GOJHL Showcase tournament hosted Dec. 6-8 in Caledonia. Photo credit: McGinny Photography
By Spencer Seymour
With all the eyes in the league fixed on them and a pair of marquee matchups on the docket, the St. Marys Lincolns left the GOJHL Showcase tournament in Caledonia with four points after defeating the London Nationals and Ayr Centennials.
The back-to-back wins marked just the third time since losing their first game of the season on Oct. 25 that the Lincolns have picked up consecutive wins. Additionally, with the Lincs’ second game of the weekend marking the halfway point in their season, they continue to be on pace to allow fewer goals than last year’s Sutherland Cup Champion Listowel Cyclones. Last year’s Cyclones finished the season averaging 2.06 goals against per game, while this year’s Lincolns are on pace to give up 1.68 goals per game.
St. Marys has yet to allow more than four goals in a single game this season. They have only trailed by two goals on three occasions so far this year, and two of those three multi-goal deficits came in the Lincolns’ 4-2 loss to the Elmira Sugar Kings on Nov. 24.
Arguably the biggest bright spot of the weekend from a team-wide standpoint was an influx of goals from throughout the lineup. In their eight most recent games before the Showcase, five players scored 18 of the Lincolns’ 21 goals.
Head coach Jeff Bradley was relieved to see other members of the roster find the back of the net.
“It was great to see, and that’s a big part of what we’ve been trying to correct,” Bradley told the Independent. “When we talked about our production as of late, we weren’t getting enough offence throughout the lineup. Even though we’ve kept our goals against relatively low, we obviously want our goals for to be a bit higher, and we needed a bit more production from different parts of our lineup, and thankfully, we started to get that.”
The Lincolns opened their Showcase schedule with a rematch of their 3-2 overtime loss on Nov. 29 at the hands of the London Nationals. This time, it was the Lincolns coming out on the winning side of a 3-2 final score.
Ryan Cornfield got the scoring started for the Lincolns six minutes and three seconds into the contest, his seventh of the season that snapped a seven-game goal slump for the Kitchener, Ont. native. Just one minute and 36 seconds later, however, Connor Clark ended his own eight-game offensive dry spell, tying the game at one apiece.
Coach Bradley praised Cornfield, along with his netminder and one of the team’s newest members, for their strong performances against London.
“Nico was great for us in net. He didn’t get down after the unfortunate second goal. He stayed locked in and made some really important saves for us, especially in the third period. I thought Ryan [Cornfield] had one of his best games of the season. His game has matured from last year, and he played exactly how we need him to.
“Quinn [Gavin-White] is getting more and more comfortable with our team and our style of play,” added Bradley. “It was tough for him coming in and playing two games before getting to practice with us, but you can see he’s a really smart hockey player, and throughout the weekend, I thought he looked more and more like a Lincoln.”
The weekend wasn’t all good news for St. Marys as Noah VandenBrink suffered an injury during the first period against London. The product of Belmont, Ont. didn’t return to the game against the Nationals and didn’t suit up for the Lincolns one night later against Ayr.
Clark found the back of the net in the second with a shorthanded goal that came off a rare misplay of the puck by goaltender Nico Armellin, who turned in an otherwise superb 29-save performance in the St. Marys net.
The Lincolns quickly got the game tied at 2-2, with Ryan Hodkinson in front of the Nationals’ net tipping a feed from the boards over London’s Casimir Weckström for his eighth of the season less than three minutes later. Coming in, Hodkinson had just one assist in his six previous games.
As it appeared like the two teams would head into the third period deadlocked, the ‘Milton Magicians’ lived up to their moniker with a beautiful Luca Spagnolo shot set up by a perfect Jaden Lee pass, a goal that was preceded by a sequence anything but beautiful and perfect.
After causing the Nationals to turn the puck over near the Lincolns’ blueline, Spagnolo got the puck into the neutral zone before losing hold of his stick. As he scrambled to get his stick properly back in his grasp, the Captain somehow managed to shovel the puck to Lee, who skated into the London zone while Spagnolo got firm control of his twig once again and eventually set up Spagnolo to rocket home the eventual game-winner.
In the third, Armellin turned in a world-class performance in net, making 15 saves in the third period, punctuated by several 10-bell stops and withstanding an offensive zone onslaught by the Nationals in the final two minutes of the game to preserve the Lincolns’ 3-2 victory.
Bradley admitted that he didn’t think his team’s performance was perfect against the Nationals, but was pleased that despite a few errors along the way, they still found a way to come away with the victory.
“There definitely were parts of our game that I was really happy with. Our shots against were low against a good team, so we still defended pretty well. We had a practice Friday morning, and we put a big emphasis on getting to the dirty areas to score goals and we did a good job of that. Our penalty kill was perfect all weekend. So, even though it wasn’t quite as tidy as we hoped, in the end, we got the result we came for.”
Lincs blank Centennials in near-perfect shutout
While their game against London wasn’t quite as well-rounded a performance as the team would have liked, the same couldn’t be said for the Lincs’ 3-0 work-of-art-level victory over the Ayr Centennials.
“We were absolutely outstanding,” raved Bradley. “Ayr is a difficult team to play against because they come at you hard. They fly all over the ice. They don’t make any short passes; it’s all across the ice and up the ice, and we ask our defenders to get up on their wingers and squeeze them down in their zone, so the support from our forwards in the neutral zone was really important to put pressure on them and create turnovers.”
Bradley explained that even though the Centennials managed to get some scoring opportunities, his squad kept the quality of Ayr’s shots quite low.
“Against a team like that, there will be some chances against. It’s impossible to prevent them from getting some opportunities. They are a skilled team who play a really high-flying style, but overall, I thought we did a great job limiting the number of good chances they had and did a fantastic job executing what we need to execute.”
The game’s first goal came at the 11:14 mark of the opening frame when Hayden Barch ended an eight-game point drought to score his fourth goal of the season. Seven minutes and 25 seconds later, Hodkinson potted his ninth of the year after a brilliant drive to the net by Cohen Bidgood, whose one-foot touch pass got hammered by Hodkinson by Centennials’ goaltender Zach Jovanovski.
The Lincolns’ penalty kill withstood nine Ayr powerplays during the game, which came after they successfully killed all four Nationals’ powerplays one day earlier. Going into the second Showcase game against the Centennials, Ayr had recorded at least one powerplay goal in six of their previous seven games.
The 3-0 win also marked the fourth time out of five interconference games that the Lincolns have earned a shutout against an Eastern Conference foe.
Bradley had a tough time singling anyone out in their 3-0 win over Ayr as, in the eyes of the bench boss, every member of the lineup played a strong game.
“Everybody was fantastic. This is one game where it’s hard to pick out specific guys who stand out because everybody played so well. They all really wanted that game. We knew we got a tough draw in the Showcase, and there wouldn’t be an easy game for us this year. Coming in, we hadn’t lost at the Showcase in the last two years.
“Our guys aren’t phased by the unfamiliarity of the other conference because we’ve had a lot of success against teams in the East. We’ve had five games against teams in the other conference, and we’ve only allowed one goal. We look at it as a big challenge, and our guys have been great about rising to the occasion.”
According to Bradley, the hot start to December has the Lincolns feeling a renewed vigour after a rocky 10-game November schedule that saw St. Marys end up with a 5-4-1 record.
“This weekend was a big-time momentum boost for us, considering the opponents that we beat. London is a very good team who beat us a week earlier, and Ayr is regarded as one of the best teams in their conference, so winning against them and winning the way we did was big for our confidence. We didn’t just get by. We controlled that game. We played it the way we wanted to play it.”
The Lincolns play a rare Thursday home game on Dec. 12 when they host the Listowel Cyclones before going to Stratford to face the Warriors on Dec. 13.
Ryan Hodkinson fires the puck by goaltender Zach Jovanosvki after a marvelous set-up by Cohen Bidgood during the St. Marys Lincolns’ 3-0 shutout over the Ayr Centennials. Photo credit: McGinny Photography
