Red Wings take lead as Morrissey records three points
A midget-aged rookie sparked the Arsenault’s Fish Mart Western Red Wings on Sunday night. Forward Connor Morrissey of Tignish scored two goals and assisted on another as the Red Wings doubled the Kensington Moase Plumbing and Heating Vipers 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Island Junior Hockey League final series.
“It’s huge to come into their barn and steal a game,” said Morrissey, 17. “Now we are going back home, and hopefully we can get another big win.” Game 4 is at the Evangeline Recreation Centre on Thursday, with Game 5 in Kensington on Friday.
Both contests are 7:30 p.m. starts.
Power-play goals
At Community Gardens, the Red Wings scored two powerplay goals to take a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. “That was huge and we kept rolling from there,” said Morrissey. The teams exchanged second-period goals as the Red Wings led 3-1 after 40 minutes.
The Vipers closed to within 3-2 just before the midway mark of Period 3, but Chasse Gallant added an insurance goal at 16:06. “We kept playing hard and blocked a lot of huge shots,” said Morrissey in explaining how the Red Wings reacted to having their lead cut to one goal.
Calvin McRae (1-1) also scored for the Red Wings while Dillon Wall contributed two assists. Riley Gallant and Campbell Gallant countered for the Vipers. Winning goaltender Bronson Banks made 31 saves while the Vipers’ Grant Grady turned aside 33 shots.
Vipers head coach Wade Waddell felt his team “took a lot of undisciplined penalties,” including three unsportsmanlike conduct minors in the first eight minutes.
“The ones you really hate are when you start arguing with officials and you get two minutes for unsportsmanlike, and those are the ones that are hard to kill off,” said Waddell. “We got ourselves behind right off the bat, and I thought as the game progressed we got better, but we still do not have that sense of urgency that they have right now. We have to find that over the next few days.”