Spiders continue hot start, top Loons 7-4

Jan. 2, 2017

It was an intense and testy affair on Sunday night as the Spiders came away with a 7-4 win over the Minnesota Loons.

The Loons controlled play early in the first period as they generated several odd man rushes and worked the puck smartly in the offensive zone. It quickly became evident the Spiders would need to play special attention to the B3 East leading scorers Henn and Hayden. Although the ice was tilted in the Loons favor the Spiders made their chances count early and jumped to a 2-1 lead off goals from Matt Adelmann and Christian Peterson. The Loons added goals late in the first and early in the second to take a 3-2 lead. At this point the Loons game plan was clear. They continually had two forwards floating high looking for breakout passes to create odd man rushes.

The turning point of the game came early in the second period as the Spiders took back-to-back penalties to give the Loons 1:55 of a 5-on-3 advantage. The Spiders killed the penalties and the momentum had changed. The Spiders, or more specifically Tom Prausa, scored a pair of goals within 40 seconds of the penalties ending to give the Spiders the lead.

As the second period progressed the Spiders found their legs and short-benched Loons began to tire and the Loons were pinned in their own zone. Joe Long, Shawn Tromizcak, and Cory Vandenberghe added goals to make the final score 7-4 in favor of the Spiders.

The Spiders have now played each team in the B3 East and complete the circuit with a 5-1-2 record. Entering the evening the Spiders were in second place but a full slate of games was bound to cause some movement. The biggest result was the Fighting Piranhas defeating the Venom 5-3. This result moves the Spiders into sole ownership of 1st place!

Fun fact – The last time the Spiders were alone in first place was March 27th, 2013, the final day of the 2012-13 season. This was the last season at C1 for the Spiders as they won the C1 East division with a 14-5-1 record before falling to the Fighting Piranhas in the C1 championship game.

After a string of five games starting after 9:00pm the Spiders finally get a reasonably early game time with a 7:15pm puck drop on Sunday. The opponent will be the Fighting Piranhas, who the who the Spiders beat 7-5 in the season opener. In that game the Spiders jumped out to a 6-0 lead before holding on for the W.