Coming off two close games in the Valley High School Hockey League opening weekend — defeating West Kings 3-0 and losing to Horton 2-1 — the Avalanche lost 4-3 to West Kings in the tournament opener Thursday night.
The Avalanche coaching staff believed the first West Kings goal should have been disallowed because the puck went into the net behind the mesh. Especially after the hometown team scored again 10 seconds later to move in front.
The Avalanche took a couple of costly penalties and also played two men short in the second period. Still, overall, head coach Mark Tye thought the team had a pretty good effort.
Scoring for the Avalanche were Nick Gerhardt, Mitchell Singer and Joe Beaton.
Another tough game was on Oct. 17. Despite a steady, gritty and determined effort by the Avalanche, the team lost 3-2 to the JL Ilsley Judges from the Metro High School Hockey League. Joe Bishop and Peter MacDougall scored for the Avalanche.
The NSSAF Baseball Championship took place in Dartmouth Saturday and Sunday. As a result, the hockey team was short of players in large numbers and it showed as the Avalanche played with only nine skaters and were thumped 9-0 by the Amherst Vikings. With two players in the penalty box at one point, it left the Avalanche with one player on the bench.
The situation was similar for the Avalanche during the West Kings Tournament last fall, but the team still managed to make it to the semi-final game before losing.
Avalanche Notes
The team begins its 2014-15 home portion of the schedule Oct. 25 in a 7 p.m. start against the surprising Central Kings team.
Central Kings were completely dominated in recent games against Horton and Parkview, but won both games against Bridgewater by scores of 3-1 and 3-2 in a shoot-out before a jam packed rink. The hero for Central Kings was goaltender Ben Best, who stood on his head to make saves and frustrated his opponents to no end. It’ll be interesting to see whether Best has another outstanding performance in Windsor this Saturday evening.
The Avalanche travel to Bridgewater for a game against the Vikings on Friday evening.
