Spitfires defeat Bulldogs 4-1
Veterans stand tall again in 4-1 victory over Hamilton
Thursday was a textbook example of what has made the Windsor Spitfires so successful early in the season.
While this was supposed to be a rebuilding campaign for the Memorial Cup champions, Windsor is one of just four teams in the Ontario Hockey League with a double-digit win total after Thursday’s 4-1 victory over the Hamilton Bulldogs before 3,994 at the WFCU Centre.
“I didn’t expect the record to be what it is, no question, but there’s a belief that we can win every night,” said Spitfires head coach Trevor Letowski, whose team improved to 10-5-1-0 on the season. “There’s an expectation to win and I think we’ve challenged them from Game 1 to have that.”
Veterans have played key roles for the Spitfires, not just for playing heavy minutes on defence, or providing offence or solid goaltending, but also leadership.
Windsor dressed just five defencemen on Thursday and only Austin McEneny and Sean Day have played in the league prior to this season.
“They’re here to learn and here to work,” McEneny said of the club’s younger players. “They’re just a great group of guys and developing nicely. Everyone’s doing their job.”
Captain Aaron Luchuk continues to lead the offence. He opened the scoring with his 16th goal of the season in 16 games, which is tied for the league lead.
“Our game plan was to stay hard and work hard every shift,” said Spitfires forward Cole Purboo, who played on the top line with Luchuck and Logan Brown. “We got that first goal, which was good, and I thought we had a good game together.”
While the Spitfires often rely on veterans for offence and Mikey DiPietro to be a standout in goal, the club has also used solid special-teams play.
Brown set up Day for the game’s lone power-play goal to put Windsor up 2-0 early in the second period and Hamilton failed to score on two power-play chances. It’s the 10th time this season Windsor has won the special teams battle in a game.
“Logan Brown’s addition is huge,” Letowski said of his big centre, who had two assists and now has eight points in four games since returning from the NHL’s Ottawa Senators. “He’s really a difference maker, and now there’s a lot of belief we can beat teams, especially with Mikey. We challenge them to outwork teams and most nights we’ve done that.”
Tyler Angle’s goal made it 3-0 for the Spitfires less than five minutes into the second period, with Windsor firing the period’s first seven shots. After a timeout, the Bulldogs pushed over the final 15 minutes of the period with a 12-2 shot advantage, but could not beat DiPietro.
“After we scored the third goal, I thought we kind of went a way a little bit and I thought they pushed us hard for the last 15 minutes,” Letowski said.
But Mathew MacDougall extended Windsor’s lead to 4-0 in the third period with the only disappointment coming with 72 seconds to play when Jake Murray scored to end DiPietro’s
shutout bid.
“We’re having a good start to the season and just continue building each day,” McEneny said. “We’ve been doing our role and everyone else is helping us out and knowing their role. We just have to keep going from here.”