St. Marys Lincolns’ forward Ryan Hodkinson gets robbed by Strathroy Rockets’ goaltender Hayden Duncan during the Lincs’ 2-1 loss to Strathroy on Nov. 8. Photo credit: McGinny Photography
By Spencer Seymour
The good news for the St. Marys Lincolns is that, through 16 games this season, they still have only trailed by two goals or more once, the same frequency at which they have allowed more than three goals in a game.
Their defence and goaltending has been excellent.
However, despite continuing those impressive stretch of preventing goals entering their net on Nov. 8 against the Strathroy Rockets, the Lincolns suffered their second defeat of the season in a tight contest when they fell to the Rockets 2-1.
Head coach Jeff Bradley felt there was a quelled intensity in the game and credited the visitors for largely causing that with their stingy defensive structure.
“Strathroy played a patient game,” Bradley told the Independent. “They were playing a little bit of rope-a-dope with us. Both teams sat back quite a bit, there were a lot of controlled breakouts. It was back-and-forth in that regard, and they were comfortable limiting the game to a special teams battle, and we didn’t come out on the right side of that battle.”
Bradley elaborated on what specifically Strathroy was doing defensively that made it so difficult for the usually-electric Lincolns’ offence to click.
“It’s a lot of what they were doing to us. They had three guys stacked on their blueline and as we’re coming out of our zone, they would stick a fourth guy there, so we weren’t getting any rush opportunities. I think we maybe had one true odd-man rush all night. We missed some chances, but they really kept us from getting very many dangerous scoring chances.”
The only goal of the first period came at the 14:16 mark when Ben Funston broke the ice with his second of the season on a Strathroy powerplay, assisted by Damian Pancino and Owen Gray. Despite outshooting the Rockets 10-7, the Lincs struggled mightily to generate any productive offensive zone time, which Bradley noted was something the team worked to clean up in the final 40 minutes.
“We didn’t have a lot of jump but we also are not getting any momentum in the first period because, to their credit, Strathroy was doing a great job of sitting back. We’re not getting opportunities off the rush. We’re not getting high-quality scoring chances in the slot because they’re they got five guys in there.
“Going into the second, we talked about trying to swing momentum our way by being physical and I think some of our guys did that,” Bradley continued. “I think it swung momentum in our favour a bit. Overall, I certainly don’t think they were miles better than us or anything. That was a tight game and they capitalized on one more of their chances than we did.”
Luca Spagnolo tied the game for the Lincolns on a powerplay just under nine-and-a-half minutes into the middle period, with assists going to Jaden Lee and Owen Voortman. With the goal, the Lincolns’ captain now sits just two tallies away from hitting 50 goals in his GOJHL career.
The game remained deadlocked at one apiece until the third period was just 24 seconds shy of its midway point, at which time Josh Denes extended his point streak to six games with another goal on a Rockets’ man advantage. The goal held up as the eventual game-winner with goaltender Hayden Duncan single-handedly holding the Rockets’ lead late in the third when the Lincolns pulled their netminder Colby Booth-Housego in favour of the extra attacker.
All three goals in the game came on a powerplay, which Bradley noted as an element in how the team combats what the Rockets threw at them.
“Our special teams have to be better, for one. But we’re we’ve played that type of game before. We’ve played games like that against Strathroy numerous times in the last three years. It didn’t seem like we had that much offensive jump. I don’t think it was due to a lack of effort. I didn’t think we were great, but I didn’t think we were terrible either. Nobody really put the rest of the team on their back when we needed it.”
The Lincolns are now set to begin a six-game road trip that spans over the next three weeks, including a Nov. 13 visit to the LaSalle Vipers followed by trips to St. Thomas on Nov. 15 and Listowel on Nov. 16.
