EAST ALTON – DeSmet took control early of their Thursday night Mid-States Club Hockey Association game against Edwardsville and never really let up as the Spartans got a hat trick from Cameron Osdieck in a 6-3 win over the Tigers at East Alton Ice Arena.
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The loss dropped the Tigers to 2-3-0 (four points) in the MSCHA's Municipal Conference; the Spartans remained undefeated at 4-0-0 (eight points) in the Muny.
“I give them credit,” said Tiger coach Jason Walker. “I felt they played an outstanding game; they worked hard – we kind of shot ourselves in the foot in the first period and tried to climb out of it, but couldn't. You're not going to do that against a good team like that.
“We just didn't manage the puck well, especially in the offensive zone – we didn't keep it simple enough getting pucks to the net, a lot of zone issues and turning the puck over; we've got to be better than that. That led to all the time they had in our zone; we just didn't put enough pressure on them.”
The Tigers' focus thus far in the season has been on defense, Walker said. “We've focused on our defensive side; we haven't focused as much on the offensive,” Walker said. “I think that, in every game that we've played, we haven't created as much offensively as we've wanted to. We've got to simplify our game a little bit; against these good teams, they're not going to give you those glaring opportunities – you're going to have to create them and we've got to be better with the puck.”
Osdieck got the Spartans on the scoreboard early with a goal 3:17 into the game from assists from Daniel Kinzer and Joshua Abel; Justin Reynolds upped the DeSmet lead to 2-0 at 9:45 of the period off a helper from Benjamin Lodes, with a third goal coming on a Spartan power play Nickolas Thorpe with assists from Reynolds and Kenneth Gibson at 2:35 of the second.
The Tigers finally got on the sheet themselves thanks to a Mark Tucker goal at 13:27 of the period with an assist to Stanley Lucas; the Spartans upped the lead to 4-1 with Osdieck's second goal at 1:56 of the third. That was cut to 4-2 just eight seconds later off a Mitchell Oberlag score off helpers from Lucas and Will Schuster.
Osdieck finished off his hat trick at 7:21 of the third, with Kinzer adding a power-play goal at 10:27 of the period and the Tigers' Tucker getting a consolation goal with 1:47 left in the game to finish the scoring for the night.
Matthew Griffin was between the pipes for the Tigers, facing 38 shots and making 32 saves; for the Spartans, Graden Reis faced just 13 Tiger shots and turned back 10 of them. The Spartans were 2-for-2 on the power play while the Tigers went 0-for-1 on the night.
Next up for EHS is an 8:15 game tonight at Queeny Park in west St. Louis County against Chaminade before they face Kirkwood at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Queeny Park.
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