Written by Coach Curran
The Drumheller Dragons laced up for two weekday games last week on the road versus the Calgary Mustangs on Tuesday and at home on Wednesday versus the Brooks Bandits.
CALGARY MUSTANGS
Tuesday was the first road game in almost a month for the Dragons, after having just completed a 8-game homestand. The Mustangs have had a rough go of it this season but have also beaten come of the best teams in the league, and they pushed the Dragons hard this game. The third period ended with both teams tied at 3 apiece on goals by Tyler Kreklewich, Joren Patenaude and Blake Kleiner. In 3-on-3 overtime, Cody Young scored the winner with less than 30 seconds left.
This was not a pretty game and I certainly don't want to diminish the hard work of the Mustangs as they deserved a better fate. To go out there and play the way we did was ugly and on this night all I can say is I'm glad we won and hope we realized that every team is a threat.
BROOKS
On Wednesday the Bandits returned to Drumheller twice within a week, with the Dragons winning the last match in overtime. However, the Dragons lost this one 5-4 in the last 3 minutes of the game on a faceoff where we lost our assignments and the Bandits got the go-ahead goal. The game itself had a little bit of everything as both team battled back and forth with goal scoring, hard hits, good goaltending, and tempers flaring. It was a very entertaining game where both teams battled to the end and unfortunately the Dragons lost.
Goal scorers for the Dragons were Cody Young (2), Slater Dykema, and Yauheni Astrouski with his first of the year.
I thought we played hard but we made some mistakes that cost us against a good team. We played with passion and composure and I thought that all of the boys played well. We are still growing but getting better every day for the most part. We need to learn to keep the game simple and relax in the final moments of a game. Brooks has a lot of fire power and a couple of their goals we handed to them. But to our credit we played the way we need to if we are going to push the big teams in our league.
Photo by Broken Curfew Photography
