The Bolts went into their weekend series of three games knowing it was going to be an uphill battle, as the teams they faced – Mountainview, Airdrie and Cochrane – were the first place and second place teams in the North and South divisions.
And while the Stettler Lightning lost two of the three games, they were hard-fought battles that made their opponents work for it, according to General Manager Doug Smith. Stettler, the only team to beat Mountainview in the pre-season, lost 4-1 on Friday, Oct. 7 and then 7-2 to the Cochrane Generals on Saturday, Oct. 8. But, the final game, against first-place Airdrie Thunder, had fans cheering their home team as the Bolts won 3-2 in overtime.
“We earned everything we got in those games,” Smith said, noting that the team is starting to come together and each game brings visible improvements.
Friday’s game was strongly affected by time in the penalty box, as the opening goal of the game, by the Colts, came on a powerplay. Stettler’s only goal, scored toward the end of the first period, came off the stick of Mark Bengert, with assists from Matt Johannson and Dylan Houston.
The next day, the Bolts played the Cochrane Generals, first-place team in the south division. The penalty box again cost the Bolts, as two of the goals in the 7-2 battle were powerplays.
Finally, the Sunday afternoon match against Airdrie saw the first go by without any scoring by either team, and the second only with one goal, by the Thunder.
The Lightning, not content to go winless in three, broke their scoring dry spell early into the third period with a goal by Matt Sylvester, assisted by Ethan Rost and Quade Cassidy. About three minutes later, Brendan Bardwell sniped the puck past the Thunder’s netminder to bring the game to 2-1 for Stettler – but the Thunder tied it up a short moment later.
It was starting to look like the five-minute over-time period was going to go scoreless, but Sylvester swooped in with a goal to break the deadlock and earn Stettler the win.
“I’m really happy with the overall view of how things went for us this weekend,” said Head Coach Gavin Brandl after the games. “Obviously going 1-2 in a three-game weekend is not what we are looking for. But if you break it down game by game we had certain areas of the game that we wanted to focus on and I thought we certainly did that.”
He said that holding Mountainview to four goals, when the team averages about eight per game, is “a huge testament to our defensive improvements.”
He also praised his team’s penalty killing, as the exhausting task of playing short-handed for six of the last eight minutes of the game was rough on the team.
“Special teams is an area that we will continue to work on going forward as our powerplay has been sputtering to this point,” Brandl said. “It’s not an area I’m concerned with yet, because there’s too much skill throughout our lineup for it to not turn around.”