Elite team and Empire Team Weekend Recap With Tampa Juniors
The Florida Eels Junior Teams had one game each this past weekend against the Tampa Juniors. Next weekend the two organizations square off once again for a home and away series.
The Elite team fell victim to the high scoring efforts of Jared Goudreau who scored an even strength goal and a power play goal against the Eels. Trey Stern notched another one for Tampa. On the Eels side Josh Delezenne scored an even strength goal assisted by Zac Boyle and veteran and assistant Captain Jonathan Carlson. The Eels second goal came from veteran hard worker Kade Brannon assisted by team Captain Vasili Malliaras. In net for the loss was Max Kirkwood who faced 18 shots on net.
The Eels did come out hard and unloaded 44 shots on Tampa’s goalie but were not able to finish. We have some work to do no doubt but we are not discouraged says coach Bloomingburg. His players played very well on the fore-check and on the back check. His players were relentless on the attack as indicative with the 44 shots on net. We just need to find the back of the net and we will be working on that this week.
The Empire team faced an extremely fast Tampa Empire squad. Tampa was on fire and unleashed 14 shots in the first period. The Eels only had just 4. Most impressive was the ability to keep Tampa scoreless in the first period while defending 5 shot handed goals. Indeed, the Eels with only 4 shots were able to come out of that period in the lead with a goal by Brandon Halersen assisted by Caleb Diesel and Stephen Bourque. Bourque continues to have a great season with the Eels.
In period two the Eels had another 5 penalties and Tampa capitalized on those chances with two power play goals plus an even strength goal and the Eels went down 3-1.
In period three Brandon Halversen went on fire and took over the scoring as he has been known to do on the Elite team and notched his 2nd and 3rd goal of the game – both coming on the power plays allowing the Eels to gain a tie and enabling the team to go into OT.
The Eels lost the game at 3:33 in OT.
Coach Frank was extremely proud of the boys. They showed enormous character in coming back. They worked really hard and showed intestinal fortitude and work ethic battling back. One is never happy to loose but this was a moral victory for this squad. We gladly will take this 1-point on the road. The Eels goalie Sergey Hall played another strong game keeping us in there in the first period when the score easily could have been 4-1. He faced 43 shots in this match.
