Sweet Revenge For The Ice

Mississauga, ON – Matt Fraser, Erik Benoit, Joe Antilla, Cody Eakin, and Max Reinhart all contributed in the scoring column as the Kootenay Ice cruised to a 7-3 victory over the Owen Sound Attack Thursday night at the Hershey Centre.

Owen Sound battled for the full sixty-minutes, but fell short with goals coming from Mike Halmo, Cameron Brace, and Jarrod Maidens.

The first meeting of the tournament between the Attack and the Ice was not one any fan of the Ice would want to remember.  The Attack handed the Ice their first loss of the tournament en route to a 5-0 thumping of the Western Hockey League champions.

The Ice were looking for revenge while the Attack, fresh off their loss to the Mississauga St. Michael’s Majors, were looking for the same results as in their previous meeting.

The scoring opened 5:12 into the first period with the Attack taking the early lead.  Halmo fanned on a shot fooling net minder Nathan Lieuwen leaving a wide open net for Brace to slide in his first of the tournament.

After killing off a five-on-three disadvantage, the Attack continued to roll on the offense late into the period.  Jesse Blacker let a wrist shot go handcuffing Lieuwen who couldn’t squeeze his arm tight enough to stop the puck from getting past him leaving another open net gift; this time for Maidens.

The Ice responded 7:48 into the second period cutting the lead in half when Benoit kicked the puck to his stick off a rebound that popped out from Scott Stajcer’s pad.

Stajcer was given the starting position by head coach Mark Reeds in replace of Jordan Binnington who had started all games so far in the tournament.

“I guess after the fact you could look at it anyway you want,” said Reeds when asked about the goaltending change.  “ In retrospect you can say what you will, but the important thing was putting a new goaltender in there [I felt] my players were going to be focused early in the game and prepared to play.”

After Brendan Hurley took a penalty for hooking, the Ice caught a break sending in Eakin and Antilla on a two-on-one.  Eakin dished it off to Antilla who showed patience waiting for Stajcer to drop before going top shelf over his blocker.

Fraser gave the Ice their first lead of the game with 8:46 left in the second period on the power play.  Fraser fired a wrist shot over the blocker of Stajcer mimicking Antilla’s goal just minutes before.

Fraser, Eakin and Reinhart added tallies in the third period as the Ice scored six unanswered goals before Halmo broke the streak with the Attack’s third goal of the game.

“We played with a little more emotion,” said head coach of the Ice Kris Knoblauch on his team’s response to going down by two goals after the first period.

He also added a little controversy, stating that his team felt it was going to be an easy night after hearing of the goaltending change.

“We thought the game was going to be easy, they had some good hockey players out of the lineup [referring to Joey Hishon and Garret Wilson].  They made the goaltender change… it’s a long year and I think all players look for any chance that it’s going to be easy.”

Eakin added an empty-net goal for his second of the contest.  Both Eakin and Fraser finished with two goals each.

“It feels great taking it to them,” said Antilla.  “Being down 2-0 going into the second and taking it back it was awesome.”

The Ice will now face the Majors in the semi-final on Friday for a chance to meet the Saint John Sea Dogs in the 2011 MasterCard Memorial Cup final.