CARDINALS SLIP AGAINST WESTLAKE
By Matt Maher
BOARDMAN, OH – Canfield looked to bring in the New Year with a fresh start against West Lake on Sunday afternoon. While the game showed some good chances for the Cardinals and even brought some scoring, their efforts would ultimately not be enough to take down the Demons and West Lake would come out of Boardman with a 6-1 victory and be a little beaten up.
The first frame started off slow with no scoring until the 4:57 mark when Sean Evilsizer put one past Peyton Nottingham thanks to some nice passing from Kevin Teets and Sean pavich. Canfield wouldn’t let that score stay for long because with 2:54 to go Gavin Rupert would put a dime past Vinny Boccardi to even things up, the lone assist belonged to Adoni Darkadakis. The Demons would respond only 25 seconds later when Evilsizer found his second with this one going unassisted. Nottingham finished the period with a respectab8 saves while Boccardi stopped 11.
West Lake would not hold back come the second period where they would score 4 unanswered goals and totally upend the Cardinals defense. Seth Schons found the first of the period with 9:46 still to play while Luke Hyland would score less than two minutes later and then Sam Dossa tallied 67 seconds later. Canfield showed some improvements in their defense after Dossa’s goal but it would falter once more when Evilsizer scored with only 53 seconds remaining and found the always impressive hat-trick. Nottingham would not find much better here, only stopping 3 of 7 shots faced while Boccardi managed to stop all 7 of his shots faced.
Period 3 saw solid defense from the Cardinals and much better net minding from Nottingham as West Lake was kept off the scoreboard. While West Lake was held silent they returned the favor by keeping Canfield away from the net as well. Nottingham and Boccardi both faced and saved 9 shots from their opponents. The quarter may not have seen any scoring but it did see both teams release their frustrations at the very end of the game when some players decided to drop the gloves and do the tango. While fighting is a staple of professional hockey, high school hockey has strict rules against it so while the tussles may have been the most entertaining part of the period, it’s also the part that will cost several players on both sides 3 to 4 games suspensions. While both sides erupted at the end they were able to leave it all out on the ice and walk away without any injuries which is always fantastic news.
The Cardinals put an effort forward in this home game but it just wasn’t enough to find the goals needed and the result would be a 3-6 record while Westlake would improve to 5-2 on their season. West Lake will be back home on January 27th when they host Aurora at 5:30PM while the Cardinals will travel to Normandy for a tilt with the Invaders on January 21st at 3:00PM.
