Announcement
The Atom B regular season got underway with a bang Saturday morning. The Community Savings Vipers were up against a familiar foe in the Westward Parts Green Hornets. Fans of the Vipers will recall that in last weeks exhibition game against the Hornets the Vipers clawed their way back from a 3-0 deficit in the third period to tie the game. With the knowledge that they had the ability to do this, all that stood between the Viper’s and their first win of the season was Westward Parts and the previous Halloween evening of late night revelry and sugar fueled shenanigans.
The game started out the tight defensive battle that most media types predicted it would be. With a minute and forty seconds left in the first period the Hornets finally hung one up on the board and lead 1-0. Goaltender Nolan MacGregor played fabulously stopping many scoring chances before finally succumbing to the onslaught of Hornet shots. MacGregor came up huge with 10 minutes left in period 2 when he stopped a Green Hornet on a clear break a way from center ice. With Nolan’s half of the game in the books he was replaced by the Viper’s other netminder Will Gummow. With 4 minutes remaining in the second period the Hornets were able to slip a sneaky one past Gummow and lead 2-0. It was starting to look like deja vu all over again. During the second intermission Coach Parada reminded the kids to keep playing hard, keep their legs moving and things would be OK. His words turned out to be rather prophetic as the start of the third period saw the Viper’s come storming out of the gates and the scoring came fast and furious. Three minutes and twenty seconds into period 3 Austin Price banged home a nifty feed from Hammer Burton and the score was 2-1. Four minutes later Price got his second goal of the game making it tied at 2-2. Carson Stuve assisted on the play. There was obvious consternation from the Green Hornet bench and the Viper’s coaching staff encouraged the Viper’s to keep it up. Three minutes after that Viper’s captain Austin Thorne went end to end, in a Bobby Orr like rush, and potted the go ahead goal making it 3-2 for the Viper’s. At this point it looked like the Hornet’s might fold up their tent and head home, but to their credit they kept plugging away and 2 minutes later with 13 minutes left in the game they tied it up at 3-3. We were in the middle of an old fashion barn burner. With 8 minutes left in the game Carson Stuve accepted a pass from Brandan Hart, came out of the corner and put the Viper’s up 4-3. One minute after that the Hornet’s tied it up 4-4. Jared Lower blocked a Hornet point shot and then got the puck up to Carson Stuve who streaked in on a break a way from his own blue line, burying a shot by the Hornet goaltender and putting the Viper’s in the lead again 5-5. Unfortunately with 2 minutes left in the game the Hornet’s were able to score one last time and the match ended in 5 all tie.
After the game, Coach Parada had words of praise and encouragement for the squad, and announced a series of recognition awards to be given out after each game. Please see the Guts & Glory link on the team webpage to see this weeks Stars of the game. In addition the coaching staff will be handing out a Green hard hat to the hardest working Viper in each game. The winning player is required to sign the hat, and wear it out of the dressing room and back to the next game where it will be rewarded to someone else. Will Gummow was the inaugural winner of the Green hat award.
This week the Viper’s have a practice on Monday evening and then dry land training at the teams new work out facility on Tuesday and then some mandatory rest time to get ready for a Saturday morning match up against Fargey’s Paints. Stay tuned for a video highlight of this weeks action as well as a video documentary of the Viper’s rigorous dry land training program that they began last week.
