Whitby Wolves Storm Back
Tonight the North York Storm were in town to take on the Whitby Wolves. Heading into the match the Wolves were sitting just outside the playoff picture ranking 17th in the league while the Storm were in 7th. Both teams were entering off extra time losses with the Wolves losing in a shootout and the Storm losing in overtime.
Midway through the first it was Ava Chefero-Iannazzo from the Storm opening the scoring going top shelf off a pass from Samantha Wong. Despite going on 2 penalty kills the Storm were able to hold their lead heading into the second period.
The Storm continued to rake in penalties in the second, while maintaining their lead with some strong kills throughout the game. But the Wolves weren’t going down easy on home ice as Alexandra McLean buried the equalizer or so everyone thought, the goal got called off. So the Wolves answered, scoring the official equalizer less than a minute later this time off the stick of Gabriella MacAlpine.
Starting off the third was a hit from the Storm sending the Wolves onto a four-minute power-play after a hit to the head. The Storm’s penalty kill came back into focus as it seemed they found more opportunities than allowed, but it wouldn’t be enough to hold off the Wolves as Alexa Strano shot from across burying the game-winner. Before Gabriella MacAlpine found some insurance for the Wolves putting them up 3-1. Within the last five minutes of the game the Wolves found themselves in some penalty trouble, which isn’t what you want to see when you have the lead, but despite giving the Storm a 5-on-3 opportunity the Wolves were able to hold off a comeback.
Now there were a lot of strong performers in tonight's matchup, but the one that stood out the most earning Beck’s Player of the Game was goaltender Veronica Mancini, who despite the loss was able to keep the Storm in the game and hold off a lot of Wolves opportunities, blocking 31 shots and finding her second best performance putting up a 0.912 save percentage.
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