CARDINALS SHOW HEART IN LOSS TO NORMANDY
By Matt Maher
BOARDMAN OH- – The Canfield cardinals took to the ice on Sunday to test their strengths against the Normandy Invaders. The Cardinals were coming off of a disappointing 8-1 loss against Aurora less than 24 hard prior to puck drop and needed to come out with a strong response.
Period one saw two teams play a fairly even game up until the 12:08 mark where Normandy’s Matt Nicholson found the first tally beating Peyton Nottingham in net. Normandy used the surge of energy found from scoring the first goal to keep their momentum and find the second tally on sixty-one seconds later thanks to a nice setup from Jacob Nugent to Andy Lane. Normandy’s luck didn’t run out there as Canfield’s Grayson Orlovsky went off the ice with a roughing minor with nine minutes and three seconds to go. 18 seconds later Wylan Hill beat Nottingham to make it 3-0 after one.
The puck dropped in the second period and Canfield looked like a team on a mission and with just under four minutes played Ty Novotny found the back of the Normandy net to cut the deficit to two. Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds later Canfield would make it 3-2 thanks to some good passing from Andrew Battaglia to Scotty Tucker who would get it to Marcus Epp to find the goal. The Cardinals defense stood strong in the second and things were looking good for the third until, with a minute fifty-nine to play, Scotty Tucker was found guilty of elbowing an Invader in a puck battle along the boards. It took just twenty-four seconds for Normandy to take advantage as Derrick Pierce won an offensive zone faceoff and Jacob Nugent took the puck and went top shelf to make it 4-2.
Period three was uneventful as neither team could truly get anything significant going offensively thanks to a series of icing calls against both teams. Canfield would get a couple of quality shots but any rebounds given up by Jason Nicholson were immediately cleared away by his defense. The period ended with no scoring and left us with the final score of 4-2 in favor of Normandy who improved to 5-1 and Canfield moved to 0-3 on their season. Peyton Nottingham looked comfortable after the first period and saved 22 of 26 shots faced in the game but his offense just couldn’t get past the defense of Normandy.
Canfield is back in action on Sunday December tenth where they travel to Cleveland Heights for a battle against the Tigers. That game is scheduled for a 6:30PM puck drop.
