With a 5-1 on Tuesday, the Kimberley Dynamiters have now won eight straight games, and have beaten the Golden Rockets all eight times they’ve played them this year — and it’s not been very close. The Dynamiters have scored 37 goals against Golden to their eight against.
The games were in fact closer earlier in the season; instead of both teams progressing at a similar rate, the margin of victory has just continued to widen.
This is obviously frustrating for the Rockets, who are having to grind out every game this late in the season and it showed. The team played aggressive hockey and tried repeatedly to goad the Nitros into trouble. The Rockets took eight penalties to the Dynamiters five, and their offences included a 10-minute misconduct and an unsportsmanlike conduct.
“It’s two teams going in opposite directions, to be perfectly honest with you, and those are tough games to play but a credit to our guys they stuck to our game plan and for the most part didn’t let any bad habits creep into their game,” head coach Derek Stuart said.
He said he knew that once Golden realized they didn’t have a chance to win, they focused their attention on other things and advised his team to simply stick to their game plan and avoid getting sucked into their opponent’s “extra-curricular activities.”
“I mean we don’t want to get any suspensions or anything, so coach told us to not get into any that and I think it’s a good idea not to,” said defenceman Tenzin Bogardis.
Bogardis scored a fantastic goal in the second period, feeding it to his teammate, and then curling back up and behind the goal line and put the puck in off Golden’s goalie’s head.
After their last few games, Stuart wanted to focus in practise on starting the games off strong, and the Nitros accomplished that on Tuesday.
Kade Leskosky opened the scoring about halfway through the first, capitalizing on a five-on-three power play. And while that was the only goal of the period, the Dynamiters quickly set themselves apart from their opponent, out-shooting them 19-6 while playing fast, controlled hockey.
“Our first period was really good, it was probably our best first period in a long time,” Stuart said. “I stressed to the guys that I’m not too concerned about the score after the first just two have a good start and that reminded us of teams in the past where we typically are out strong here at home and I think we had 18 or 19 shots in the first period and that was really good to see them respond to the challenge of having a good start.”
The Dynamiters took their only penalty of the first with two minutes left in the period, and not only was Golden unable to take advantage — not putting a single shot on net — Kimberley nearly scored shorthanded several times.
Mealey continues to play well and was the star of the game with two goals, including a spectacular shorthanded goal in the third — and an assist, making 17 goals and 31 total points so far this season. Matt Saretsky rounded out the scoring with his eighth of the year.
While it may seem like just another blowout, it’s still something to be proud of and there are always lessons to be learned, as Tenzin put it they can still “play 60 minutes of hockey.”
“I just congratulated them, you play a team eight times and you beat them all eight times, I don’t care who it is, that’s a pretty good accomplishment not to have one slip up throughout the year when you play a team that many times,” Stuart said. “So that’s something that they can be proud of and we’ll forget about that game and focus on Fernie coming up on the weekend.”
The team has a huge amount of confidence going into Friday’s home game against Fernie, having not lost a game since Christmas.
“The guys came back from Christmas with more of an attitude that they want to win and they’re going to do everything they can to try and win,” Stuart said. “They’re very attentive in practice they’re working extremely hard in practice and following our systems and it’s showing in the games.”
paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin
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