Friday night was the Innisfail Eagles’ last home game of the 2010/11 Chinook Hockey League regular season. The Eagles played host to the 13-5-1 Fort Saskatchewan Chiefs AAA team.
The Chiefs have just about finished making their final adjustments to their roster to make a run against the Bentley Generals for the chance to go to the Allan Cup in Kenora. They showed up in Innisfail ready to play and notch what they thought would be another easy win.
The Eagles however, on a three game winning streak, have a new confidence to them and figured this was anyone’s games to lose. The team has finally come together as a solid team.
We have two goaltenders that we feel can start any game and 21 players that can get the job done in any game. This current roster is shaping up nicely.
The Chiefs brought their full intensity to start the first period on Friday. They outshot the Eagles 13 – 9 in the first frame. They Eagles appeared to struggle to keep up to the Chiefs fast paced, hard hitting game in the first. Wade Waters got the start for the birds stopping 11 of the 13 shots he faced in the first. The Eagles were unable to solve the Chiefs goaltending in the first period.
The Eagles caught up to the Chiefs style of play in the second. A couple penalties for the Eagles allowed the Chiefs to pound a total of 17 shots at Waters in the second. The Chiefs took a 3-0 lead with a minute left in the period on a powerplay. The Eagles Jeff Clazie would finally find the mesh 23 seconds later for the Eagles first goal. Ryan Kallis and Andrew MacKenzie received the helpers. The teams spent so much time in the Eagles end that the hometown team was only able to get four shots on net in the second.
Early in the third the Chiefs jumped out to a commanding 4 – 1 lead. Just over two minutes later Clazie would notch his second of the game and cut the Chiefs lead in half. Kallis received his second point of the game with his assist.
The Eagles finally started to fully play with Chiefs after their second goal. Kallis from MacKenzie and Clazie made the game 4-3 at 8:24 in the third. MacKenzie from Kallis tied the game with 6:30 remaining. Both teams rallied trying to score the game winner. T
he Eagles hammered 13 shots on the Chiefs net in the third, out shooting the opposition for the first time in the game. Waters played another exceptional game making another eight stops in the third. Finally with 53 seconds remaing a Chiefs D man teed up a one-timer. The blade of his broken stick and the puck hurtled towards Waters. Waters appeared to flinch at the extra object flying towards him. The puck squeaked under his pad and the Chiefs regained their lead. The Eagles pulled out all the stops including pulling Waters for an extra attacker to send the game into overtime but were denied.
The Eagles put on an impressive showing for the crowd. The outcome of the 5-4 loss was not what anyone wanted but the team worked hard. A couple of bounces in the Eagles favour could have easily got them the W, it was just not in the cards I guess.
The Eagles final regular season game will be played in Sylvan against the third place Admirals. The last time these two teams met the Eagles had the upperhand with a 4-0 victory. Both teams have made some roster changes so it should be an extremely interesting game and incredibly fun to watch. Game time will be at 8:30 p.m. at the Sylvan Multiplex on Saturday January 29.
