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EAST ALTON – Regardless of the sport, if a team finds itself in an early hole, it's often quite difficult to come back.
Edwardsville's Mid-States Club Hockey Association team found themselves in such a hole in their Thursday night game against Chaminade; the Tigers tried to dig themselves ouf of the hole they had found themselves in, but fell just short and dropped a 4-3 decision to the Red Devils to go to 5-6-1 overall on the year (11 points), 2-6-1 (five points) in the Municipal Conference; Chaminade improved to 5-2-3 (13 points) overall, 4-2-3 (11 points) in the conference.
“You dig yourself into a hole early like that, it's hard to come back like that,” said EHS coach Jason Walker. “I thought the second and third period were good; we shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times with penalties. We did a good job of killing them – the start of the game was the difference tonight.
“We weren't ready to play from the drop of the puck and it showed. That's a good hockey team there, you have to give them credit; they came out hard and they played a good game.”
Walker did find positives in the loss. “There's a lot of positives to take from this game,” Walker said. “The second period was good, the third period was even better; we just couldn't bang that extra (goal) in.”
Chaminade certainly got to the Tigers early, Alexander Stewart got the ball rolling for the Red Devils just 41 seconds into the game when he beat Tiger goalie Matthew Griffin with assists from Adam Trunko and Benjamin Givens; five minutes after that, Givens found Thomas Newman with a pass, with Newman putting a shot into the net to give Chaminade a 2-0 lead just like that.
Edwardsville got a goal back with 2:52 left in the period when Mitchell Oberlag found the range to beat Chaminade's Hampus Blomdahl; Trevor Dailey and James Akeman had assists on the goal, but the Devils answered right back when Trumbo (with an assist from Jackson Kremer) and Daniel Howard (from Jacob Burnett) both scored in the late going of the period to put Chaminade up 4-1 through the first 15 minutes.
Edwardsville cut the lead to 4-2 when Jack Sumner beat Blomdahl with a one-timer with about four-and-a-half minutes left in the second period and got to within 4-3 with four seconds left in the game when Tyler Berry scored with an extra attacker to give the Tigers a shot to tie the game, but the Tigers could not get the to the net for the tying goal.
Edwardsville had 21 shots on goal for the night, with Blomdahl getting 18 saves, while Chaminade had 35 shots on goal, with Griffin getting 31 saves on the night. Edwardsville was 0-for-1 on the power play, while Chaminade went 0-for-3 with the man advantage.
“We'll keep working and keep getting better,” Walker said.
Next up for the Tigers is a Dec. 21 game against Kirkwood at EAIA; faceoff is at 8:30 p.m. before the Tigers host Lindbergh at 8:30 p.m. Dec. 28 at EAIA. Following that is an 8:45 p.m. Dec. 30 game against St. Louis University High at Webster Groves and a New Year's night game against Oakville at 6 p.m.
