The Worcester Railers took on the Adirondack Thunder Friday night and could have easily overlooked their last-place North Division opponents while looking toward this weekend’s rematch with the ECHL top-ranked Wheeling Nailers, but despite needing two comebacks Worcester played a solid 60-minute hockey game and earned two points in a 4-3 win.
After five straight games of scoring the opening goal, it took just 1:28 for Ryan Conroy to break the Railers’ streak when he was able to corral a loose puck and backhand it through traffic past Worcester netminder Hugo Ollas for the 1-0 Thunder lead.
While the Railers had a 15-9 shot advantage in the period most of the higher quality bids came from Adirondack, but thanks to saves like this one Ollas kept it a one-goal game through twenty minutes.
Worcester kept firing shots at Thunder goaltender Jeremy Brodeur, and their efforts finally paid off at 8:00 of the middle stanza when Riley Ginnell showed a little speed and beat Brodeur to the near post to make it 1-1. Blueliners Mason Klee and Cam McDonald had the assists.
The next two strikes would come close together, and unfortunately for Railers fans Adirondack forward Kevin O’Neil had them both. His first came at 10:17 on an NHL-quality slapshot from the right point and he followed that up with a hard wrist shot at 11:28 on the power play when twice Worcester failed to clear the puck.
With time running down in the second period, Matthew Kopperud cut the Thunder lead to 3-2 with 44 seconds left in the period when he banged one home past Brodeur. J.D. Dudek has the primary assist, but currently Anthony Callin is listed with the secondary assist. That helper really belongs to Griffin Luce, and it’s the 10,000th assist in Worcester pro hockey history.
The third period was pretty evenly played, which early on didn’t look great for the Railers’ prospects of getting the two points. But while it took 71 seconds in the middle period to fall behind by two goals it only took 29 seconds to turn a one-goal deficit into a one-goal lead.
Worcester was having no luck on the power play as Adirondack knew exactly what the Railers were attempting to do and worked to stop the bumper one-timer from being an open shot. So, Mason Klee and Lincoln Hatten changed things up a little and played some give and go, with Klee blasting one from in close past Brodeur to make it 3-3. Kopperud is scored with the secondary assist.
With the Thunder reeling from losing their lead Matt Demelis had a right-place, right-time goal when he lifted a backhander just inside the top corner at 13:01 to give Worcester its first lead of the game. Matias Rajaniemi and Cole Donhauser had the assists.
From there the Railers played a bit of rope-a-dope, allowing low-quality bids by the Thunder in exchange for time off the clock.
With 2.9 seconds left in regulation Ollas made a save and very quickly gloved the puck into the near corner to keep the clock running, but referee Scott Allan, positioned on the far side, quickly blew the play dead. An annoying call for Worcester fans but probably the right one.
It took so long for linesman Maxime Bedard to drop the puck on the ensuing face-off, over 30 seconds, that Nick Tuzzolino called his timeout to settle down his team. It worked as DeMelis was able to win the draw and the final horn sounded.
GAME NOTES
Scratches for the Railers were Matthew Boudens (IR/upper body), and Brendan Rons (IR/unknown). Michael Bullion was the backup goaltender. Boudens joined head coach Nick Tuzzolino behind the Worcester bench as he did in Wheeling last weekend.
In transactions this week, on Tuesday Bridgeport recalled Matias Rajaniemi and Justin Gill, and before Friday’s game Rajaniemi and Matt Kopperud were assigned to the Railers.
The Railers had two brain cramps during the second period on Friday night, one where if they’d lost could have been pointed to as a major squandered opportunity, and one where it’s hard to believe no one on the bench knew the rules. The potential game-impacting one happened with Worcester trailing 3-1 and on the power play with 5:50 remaining in the period when the Thunder took another penalty. Instead of just giving up the puck to set up the five-on-three power play the Railers continued to play with Hugo Ollas pulled for an extra attacker, going six-on-four. Unless you have an immediate scoring opportunity it’s automatic you give up the puck to get the two-man power play with all that open ice. The Railers wasted 31 seconds generating just a single shot on goal. The second happened a little later when the entire Worcester bench, coaches included, were screaming at the referees that Thunder netminder Jeremy Brodeur was using a broken stick. He absolutely was. Because he can. Unlike skaters, goaltenders can use any broken still while play is going on. It’s a little odd that the entire game roster, including a goaltender, didn’t know that.
On Wednesday the ECHL’s newest team, which will be in Greensboro, North Carolina, and is set to begin play in the 2025-26 season, announced their team’s name will be “Gargoyles”. You can see their logo in the ECHL press release, and while the colors look cool the logo itself, well, doesn’t. “Horrendous” might be a good word to use here. Obviously, it’s all about merchandise sales and you can bet the fine folks in Greensboro will be spending small fortunes buying up all that stuff. Readers will remember that just last Sunday this writer smacked around the ECHL for not having the Wheeling Nailers play enough games in the North Division, and we might get an opportunity to do that again over the summer when the 2025-26 schedule is announced and the Gargoyles also find themselves in the North Division, and also likely not playing a true division schedule.
Wayne Gretzky is famously quoted as saying, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take”. Leave it to the Buffalo Sabres to prove him wrong. It happened on Wednesday night late in the third period in their game against the Carolina Hurricanes when with an empty net Tage Thompson hit the post. Ryan McLeod, who already had scored twice in the contest, raced into the Hurricanes zone, and as he reached the puck to fire it into the open net Brent Burns slashed McLeod’s stick into two pieces. Referee Ghislain Hebert immediately signaled a penalty shot, which with an empty net is an awarded goal just as if McLeod had shot the puck into the net. Only, he didn’t. So, no team shot on goal is given. Amazingly Buffalo scored a goal and had no team shots for the period.
And one final note…if you sit near the perch that Railers Booster Club President Rich Lundin and I share you’ll hear us say lots of goofy stuff as the game progresses and funny or odd situations pop up. From “ice is slippery” when a player falls to “zebra down” when an official takes a tumble, we’ve got our own little lingo going on down there. One, which we seem to use a little too often lately when a player misfires on a shot and misses the net wildly, is “just a bit outside”. That line is, of course, stolen from the movie Major League, as spoken by Harry Doyle, played by the great Bob Uecker. “Mr. Baseball” passed away Thursday at the age of 90. There are literally hundreds are articles about his life and passing out there, so no need to reinvent the wheel here. Suffice it to say he will be missed in the sports world.
The three stars of the game were
1. WOR – Matt Demelis
2. WOR – Mason Klee
3. WOR – Matthew Kopperud
The 210Sports Player of the Game was Hugo Ollas.
Even Strength Lines
Repaci / Kaplan / Loughran
Kopperud / Callin / Dudek
Donhauser / DeMelis / Mahshie
Ginnell / Hatten / Johnson
Welsh / Luce
McDonald / Klee
Rajaniemi / Dickinson
Our affiliates last night
Syracuse 4, Bridgeport 1
In the ECHL’s North Division last night
Jacksonville 5, Reading 4 SO
Norfolk 5, Trois-Rivieres 2
Cincinnati 6, Maine 1
BOX SCORE
Adirondack 1 2 0 – 3
Worcester 0 2 2 – 4
1st Period-1, Adirondack, Conroy 6 (Boomhower, Loven), 1:28. Penalties-Smirnov Adk (slashing), 19:57.
2nd Period-2, Worcester, Ginnell 3 (Klee, McDonald), 8:00. 3, Adirondack, O’Neil 7 (Conroy, van de Leest), 10:17. 4, Adirondack, O’Neil 8 (Filmon, Ghantous), 11:28 (PP). 5, Worcester, Kopperud 8 (Dudek, Callin), 19:15. Penalties-Klee Wor (high-sticking), 10:55; Wheeler Adk (holding), 13:05; Ghantous Adk (tripping), 14:47; Ollas Wor (interference), 15:19.
3rd Period-6, Worcester, Klee 5 (Hatten, Kopperud), 12:32 (PP). 7, Worcester, DeMelis 2 (Rajaniemi, Donhauser), 13:01. Penalties-Kaplan Wor (slashing), 7:15; Boomhower Adk (cross-checking), 8:26; Ginnell Wor (roughing), 8:26; O’Neil Adk (slashing), 11:30.
Shots on Goal-Adirondack 9-10-13-32. Worcester 15-15-11-41.
Power Play Opportunities-Adirondack 1 / 3; Worcester 1 / 4.
Goalies-Adirondack, Brodeur 7-6-0-0 (41 shots-37 saves). Worcester, Ollas 4-7-0-2 (32 shots-29 saves).
A-3,090
Referees-Tyler Hascall (8), Scott Allan (54).
Linesmen-Maxime Bedard (65), Davids Rozitis (90).
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