The Worcester Railers and Maine Mariners met Friday night at the DCU Center in the first of two meetings this weekend between the ECHL North Division rivals, and while the game could hardly be described as thrilling the Railers did send the sparse crowd home happy when just over three minutes into the overtime period Griffen Luce scored to give Worcester the 2-1 win. Griffin Loughran had the other goal for the Railers while John Muse got the win on 25 saves.
The overtime win is Worcester’s fifth in extra time on the season already, which means the Railers are leaking away points to opponents too often even when they win. To make the playoffs they’re going to have to start collecting wins in regulation. Their four regulation victories on the season–yes, they have fewer regulation wins than overtime victories–are tied with Rapid City and Kalamazoo for 25th in the league, leading only Cincinnati’s and Utah’s three.
Those five overtime wins have already tied a franchise season high with the 2018-19 and 2022-23 squads. The city record is seven, set by the 1995-96 IceCats and the 2008-09 WorSharks. In that WorSharks campaign, Ryan Vesce set the city record for overtime goals in a season with four.
The opening period Friday was perhaps exactly what the Railers needed after the last few games of playing end-to-end hockey, short of scoring a bucket-load of goals. Worcester mostly played solid two-way hockey even though there wasn’t a whole lot going on at either end of the ice. Matthew Kopperud hit the crossbar behind Mariners netminder Brad Arvanitis early on, which pretty much was the extent of the excitement in the period.
With 91 seconds left in the middle period, Evan Vierling broke into the Worcester zone down the right side and was reasonably well-marked by Railers defender Matias Rajaniemi. Ryan Dickinson did not cut Christian Sarlo off and with Anthony Callin hopelessly waving his stick at Sarlo Vierling hit Sarlo with a centering feed and suddenly the puck was past Muse for the 1-0 Miane lead.
The Railers picked up the pace after that goal but had nothing to show for it until Loughran was finally able to beat Arvanitis through some traffic with 11:11 remaining in the third to tie it 1-1.
It stayed 1-1 through regulation and into the extra period. If anyone out there is keeping track of huge hits that set up overtime game-winning goals, they can let us know where Anthony Repaci ranks on that list. His big open-ice check on former Railers forward Jimmy Lambert helped spring Mathew Kopperud into the Maine zone, where Griffin Luce would grab a rebound and give Worcester the 2-1 win.
The two teams do it again Saturday night with a 6pm puck drop.
GAME NOTES
Scratches for the Railers were JD Dudek (IR/upper body), Christian Krygier (bereavement), Jack Randl (unknown injury), and Brenden Rons (14-day IR/unknown). Michael Bullion was the backup goaltender. With Semyon Varlamov out for the NY Islanders they recalled Marcus Hogberg from Bridgeport and then re-assigned Henrik Tikkanen to the AHL Islanders. Varlamov’s injury, categorized as “lower body”, is not considered serious and he’s the ever-popular “day to day”.
While Bill Ballou had Friday night off, I did get to speak with him in the morning while we were in the guise of our secret identities, and as I suspected he completely discounts any high school goal totals as figuring into anything and also believes that Marvin Degon Sr’s 209 goals for Worcester State from 1971-75 to be the city record, if one can call it that, for high-level hockey. We both agree that “pro record” is all that matters, and that’s Repaci’s record for the foreseeable future. Ballou is also going to take a look at where Repaci’s 136 three-star points (as of Friday morning) rank all-time, so expect something from him on that in the near future.
For the most part, I thought referee Rocco Stachowiak called a decent game, but there were two penalties I wanted to look at, the first being Evan Vierling’s tripping minor on Anthony Repaci at 13:00 of the opening period. From my perch, I thought it looked like a pretty solid stick-on-stick check and tweeted as such. Railers Booster Club president Rich Lundin, sitting two seats to my left, concurred. After watching the video, we were wrong. Vierling’s stick also gets Repaci’s left skate, and that’s a correct tripping call. The second was Ryan Dickinson playing without his helmet as it looked from our view that Dickinson lost his helmet while engaged with a Maine player and had no ability to disengage to leave the play. It took one watch of the video to see Dickinson was not engaged with a Maine player when he lost his helmet and did indeed continue to play without it on. So that’s Stachowiak 2, fat guys in the stands 0.
Despite a Silver Moon being involved, there’s no prize for getting the pun in today’s title, and I’m not Monkee-ing around.
The three stars of the game were:
1. WOR – 22 Griffin Luce
2. WOR – 40 John Muse
3. MNE – 1 Brad Arvanitis
The 210Sports Player of the Game was Griffin Loughran.
Even Strength Lines
Repaci / Kaplan / Loughran
Kopperud / Callin / Jacobs
Piercey / Donhauser / Nazzarett
Johnson / DeMelis / Hatten
Luce / Welsh
McDonald / Klee
Dickinson / Rajaniemi
Our affiliates last night
Springfield 5, Bridgeport 4 OT
In the ECHL’s North Division last night
Norfolk 6, Adirondack 1
Trois-Rivieres 2, Idaho 0
Wheeling 4, Kalamazoo 2
BOX SCORE
Maine 0 1 0 0 – 1
Worcester 0 0 1 1 – 2
1st Period- No Scoring.Penalties-Vierling Mne (tripping), 13:00.
2nd Period-1, Maine, Sarlo 3 (Vierling, Lambert), 18:21. Penalties-Klee Wor (holding), 1:41; Underwood Mne (hooking), 5:57.
3rd Period-2, Worcester, Loughran 3 (Klee, Kaplan), 8:49. Penalties-Dickinson Wor (helmet violation), 9:49.
1st OT Period-3, Worcester, Luce 3 (Kopperud), 3:07. Penalties-No Penalties
Shots on Goal-Maine 9-8-7-2-26. Worcester 12-6-11-2-31.
Power Play Opportunities-Maine 0 / 2; Worcester 0 / 2.
Goalies-Maine, Arvanitis 0-3-2-0 (31 shots-29 saves). Worcester, Muse 3-2-0-1 (26 shots-25 saves).
A-1,697
Referees-Rocco Stachowiak (28).
Linesmen-Sam Schildkraut (46), Davids Rozitis (90).
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