Spiders surprise Battle Cats...again

March 20, 2014

There are just times when a team has cracked the secret of beating another team. It doesn’t matter the record, standings, history…it’s just there. Right now, that is the case with the Spiders and the Battle Cats. Both teams entered the contest with their playoff fate established but the Battle Cats had a remote chance of taking the number one seed from the steam-rolling Lakers. Unlikely, but they needed to knock of the Spiders and couldn’t pull it off.

From the start of the game, the ice was tilted in the favor of the home team. Even though the Cats scored first on a play that Toronto would have waived off, the majority of scoring chances occurred on the other end. When the first period was in the book, there was a 1-0 deficit, but it was positive effort and opportunities.

Midway through the second period, the Spiders jumped out of a 2-1 lead with excellent screenshots from Prausa and Bortnem. The goals notwithstanding, the real work came from Kuppe and Jacobson, respectively, with key fore-checking efforts to feed the puck to the goal scorers. The only major let down was 18 seconds later when the team seemed to take a small break and allowed the tying goal at 2-2.

This was the turning point of the game. Rollover or buck up? It took 9 seconds for the Spiders to notify anyone watching that they were not going down when Tromiczak put the Spiders up for good. When the second period was complete, additional goals were scored by J. Maietta, and Kuppe with the score at 5-2. B. Maietta added one more with some mid-air juggling work with Hilden combining for four touches on the puck without it touching the ice.

In the end, TK Krammasz stood tall with timely saves and the Spiders outshot the Cats 41-28. Each player played strong and when they were tired, the lines were shifted to keep fresh legs in the right positions. All in all, if that game plan could be executed each week, the Spiders would be extending their season. It is efforts and team work like this that provide significant optimism for the 2014-15 season.

Next opponent: Fighting Piranhas

Attendance: 8