To paraphrase the late Jerry Garcia, what a long, terrible trip it’s been.
That’s pretty much the only polite way to describe the play of the Worcester Railers over the last 365 days, which saw a long, slow collapse from the top of the ECHL to not making the playoffs, and then an almost completely new roster playing hockey the exact same way, which is terribly.
On December 4, 2022, the Railers were tops in the ECHL with an amazing 15-2-1 record, including a league record of nine wins in a row to start the season. That night they would lose 3-2 in Newfoundland, being outshot 47-19 but still had a chance to tie that game with a late power play. They didn’t and the rest, as they say, is painful history.
So now we sit at December 3, 2023, 365 days later. By chance occurrence, that also works out to 72 games played by the Railers, which is one full season. To call the Railers’ record over these past 365 days pitiful is an affront to everything else that has ever been called pitiful. Their .396 points percentage, on a 25-40-7 record, would be the third worst season in Worcester pro hockey history if completed as one campaign. Only the Worcester IceCats first season and the Railers COVID-shortened season were worse.
One of those is the most beloved team in city hockey history, the other got a head coach fired mid-season. It wouldn’t take Nostradamus to predict where the current team would fall on that scale.
Over the last 72 games, the Railers’ offense and defense have been nothing short of pathetic, having a mind-boggling minus-63 goal differential. Absolutely none of that blame can fall on the goaltending. On the long list of great netminders to wear a Worcester jersey Ken Appleby, Tristan Lennox, and Henrik Tikkanen have been among the best goaltenders to play in the city. But when a goalie knows he has to stop everything because the team around him is terrible, sometimes he makes mistakes.
Put even a small semblance of a good team around those three guys and the Railers would have made deep playoff runs. And it’s not too late to fix this roster and get the Railers back going in the right direction.
But the clock is ticking, and it’s ticking very loudly.
As for last night’s game, don’t bother. It’s more of the same. We’ll include the Railers’ two goals below, just to say we did.
To add insult to injury, every team in the North Division except Worcester gained at least one point in the standings last night.
GAME NOTES
Scratches for the Railers were John Copeland, Todd Goehring, Christian Krygier (IR/upper), Jack Quinlivan (IR/unknown), and Quinn Ryan. Henrik Tikkanen was the backup goaltender.
Norfolk forward Mark Liwiski, who already had quite the night by being beat up by Artyom Kulakov in what referee Austin O’Rourke called “roughing”, found himself getting the gate at 5:18 of the third when referee O’Rourke called him for an unsportsmanlike conduct minor for embellishment. Liwiski slammed his stick into the glass heading to the penalty box, earning himself a ten-minute misconduct. He then voiced his displeasure about that and was given a game misconduct. If the fans sitting behind the penalty boxes are correct, Liwiski’s voice is also going to get him in trouble for the things he was yelling at Kulakov while they were in the box together. The off-ice officials in the penalty boxes and public address booth are required by league rules to report such incidents, and if fans heard it there is no chance they didn’t. So we may be hearing more about this later.
If one were to count the number of times this writer went to multi-award winning journalist Bill Ballou looking for Worcester hockey information and then subtracted the number of times I was able to help him with something, you’d probably get a number somewhere north of a thousand. And that’s only a slight exaggeration. Friday was one of the rare times I got a checkmark on my side of the ledger. Ballou writes for the Worcester Guardian right now, and in a recent profile of Ashton Calder Ballou wrote “As for the Kelly Cup…there are just too many Kellys in the pro game to do the research.” Well, taking that as a challenge, I looked up every winner of the Kelly Cup to see if any Kellys had won it. I thought I had one right away when Jason Kelly played for the 1995-96 Charlotte Checkers. But, alas, in those early ECHL years, the trophy was called the Riley Cup. As an aside, no one named Riley ever won that trophy. There is one Kelly who won the Kelly Cup, and that is Kelly Hurd of the 1998-99 Mississippi Sea Wolves. In a moment of absolute madness, I decided to see if anyone named Turner had won the IHL’s Turner Cup, a trophy whose history goes back to 1945. Even with still some digging to do into those early winning teams’ rosters it’s safe to say that just based on player indexes for the league no one named Turner ever won the trophy.
The three stars of the game were:
1. NOR – 24 Carson Golder
2. NOR – 27 Ryan Foss
3. WOR – 16 Ashton Calder
The 210Sports Player of the Game was no one.
Even Strength Lines
Jenkins / Pivonka / Calder
Piercey / Callin / Repaci
Bakanov / Robbins / White
Howdeshell / Cipollone / X
Welsh / Cosgrove
Verrier / Garat
Kulikov / Copeland
Our affiliates last night
NY Islanders 4, Florida 3
Providence 4, Bridgeport 3
In the ECHL’s North Division
Kansas City 3, Maine 2 OT
Adirondack 1, Florida 0 OT
Trois-Rivières 4, Jacksonville 3
Reading 5, Kalamazoo 3
Newfoundland 5, Idaho 4
BOX SCORE
Norfolk 0 1 4 – 5
Worcester 1 1 0 – 2
1st Period-1, Worcester, Calder 10 (Welsh, Jenkins), 11:44. Penalties-Kulakov Wor (delay of game), 1:32; Jameson Nor (tripping), 7:49; Kulakov Wor (cross-checking), 14:06.
2nd Period-2, Norfolk, Kubicek 3 (Caron, Foss), 15:06 (PP). 3, Worcester, Howdeshell 2 (Cipollone), 17:38. Penalties-Louis-Jean Nor (slashing), 4:39; Bakanov Wor (interference), 6:11; Schultz Wor (slashing), 7:39; Young Nor (hooking), 12:10; Liwiski Nor (roughing), 14:26; Kulakov Wor (roughing, roughing), 14:26; Caron Nor (holding), 18:42; Kulakov Wor (roughing), 19:25.
3rd Period-4, Norfolk, Golder 6 (McLean, Robidas), 3:54. 5, Norfolk, Golder 7 (Roy, McLean), 4:42 (PP). 6, Norfolk, Katic 3 (Foss, McDougall), 7:57 (PP). 7, Norfolk, Roy 10 (Louis-Jean, Milic), 18:14 (EN). Penalties-Pivonka Wor (high-sticking), 3:09; Kubicek Nor (roughing), 4:30; Piercey Wor (roughing), 4:30; Welsh Wor (roughing), 4:30; Liwiski Nor (diving/embellishment, misconduct, game misconduct – abuse of officials), 5:18; Caron Nor (slashing), 8:18; Jenkins Wor (high-sticking), 9:20; Kubicek Nor (hooking), 14:06; Callin Wor (cross-checking), 18:52.
Shots on Goal-Norfolk 11-10-8-29. Worcester 8-18-14-40.
Power Play Opportunities-Norfolk 3 / 9; Worcester 0 / 6.
Goalies-Norfolk, Milic 7-1-0-1 (40 shots-38 saves). Worcester, Lennox 5-5-1-0 (28 shots-24 saves).
A-2,516
Referees-Austin O’Rourke (10).
Linesmen-Conor Foley (86), Ryan Bradshaw (76).
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