Saturday night, the Worcester Railers took on the Trois-Rivières Lions for the second of two matchups between the ECHL North Division rivals this weekend, and only managed goals from Lincoln Hatten and Anthony Callin, but goaltender Henrik Tikkanen turned the DCU Center into the Tiki Room by saving all 32 Lions shots in a 2-0 win for Worcester.
The shutout gives Tikkanen five for his Railers career, putting him one behind Mitch Gillam’s franchise record of six. Tikkanen also moves into the top five in Worcester pro hockey, tying Brent Johnson for fifth. Along with Gillam, Dwayne Roloson, and Alex Stalock are next on the list with six. Curtis Sanford tops the list with ten.
Shots in the opening period were 12-9 Trois-Rivières, which, when you consider that after seven minutes in both teams could only muster a single shot each, shows how wide open the game suddenly became. But Tikkanen and Lions netminder Benjamin Gaudreau were up to the task.
In the middle frame, the shot totals swung the other way, with the Railers having the 12-7 advantage. It started to look like it was going to take a bad bounce or some sort of extraordinary effort to light the lamp.
And if you need extraordinary effort, it makes sense to look at last season’s 210Sports “Mike Moore Award” winner, Lincoln Hatten, who broadcaster Tim Foley has apparently dubbed “Pretty Boy”, used a lot of effort to make the game 1-0 at 12:31.
In the third period, the Railers didn’t get a whole lot of shots as they seemed content to just forecheck and make good plays with the puck when they had it. One of those good plays was from defenseman Calle Odelius, who turned a nothing zone entry into a goal with one smart feed as the well-rested Anthony Callin made it 2-0.
From there, Worcester had to kill off two penalties, a well-taken one from Anthony Hora and an incredibly silly one from Odelius, but Tikkanen was up to the task. Trois-Rivières spent over three minutes with the extra attacker, but the Railers’ defense would not break.
GAME NOTES
Scratches for the Railers were Michael Ferrandino (3-day IR), Thomas Gale (14-day IR/Unknown), Kolby Johnson (suspended, game 1 of 1), Riley Piercey (Suspended, game 5 of 7), Porter Schachle (14-day IR/Unknown), and TJ Walsh (14-day IR/Upper body). Tristan Lennox was the backup goaltender.
On Saturday morning, GM Nick Tuzzolino released forward Tyler Kobryn in anticipation of the league-wide active roster spot reduction on Sunday afternoon. Kobryn had been a healthy scratch more often than not this season and was pointless in the five games he did manage to get into. It was hoped he would continue the roll he was on during his 25-game stint with the team at the tail end of last season, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
As this writer suspected, the ECHL did suspend Kolby Johnson one game for shooting the puck into the spectator area. He got lucky in that those types of suspensions can be for multiple games, but the lack of maliciousness and the fact it landed nowhere near anyone were probably mitigating factors. “I was just goofing around” isn’t usually a good defense for anything, but in this case, because it’s an accurate assessment of the situation, it likely didn’t hurt Johnson. In an odd twist, in the same press release, the ECHL also announced a suspension of former Railers defender Cole Fraser for getting an instigator minor in the final five minutes of regulation in Cincinnati’s game vs Toledo. Just to complete the record, Indy’s Christopher Cameron was also suspended for two games for an unpenalized headbutt. I’ll let everyone make their own jokes there.
A little bit more on Friday night’s win, where one of hockey’s statistical oddities happened when Lions’ goaltender Vincent Duplessis was hit with the loss despite giving up just a single goal in the 6-4 loss. In hockey, the winning and losing goaltenders are determined by who was on the ice when the game-winning goal was scored, and for Friday, that was Ross Mitton’s late second-period goal that made the score 5-1 Worcester. So, despite Benjamin Gaudreau giving up four goals before being replaced, and Duplessis never being in the game when it was tied or Trois-Rivières leading, he gets saddled with the loss.
The three stars of the game were
1. WOR – #39 Henrik Tikkanen
2. WOR – #44 Anthony Callin
3. WOR – #11 Lincoln Hatten
The 210Sports Player of the Game was Drew Callin.
Even Strength Lines
Repaci / D.Callin / A.Callin
Donhauser / Miotto / Mitton
Nurmi / Dorrington / T.Schachle
Ginnell / DeMelis / Hatten
McDonald / Suda
Odelius / Hora
Stief / Samuelsson
Press Releases
RAILERS: Worcester sweeps Trois-Rivieres with 2-0 shutout victory
LIONS: None available at posting time
Our affiliates last night
Rochester 5, Bridgeport 3
In the ECHL’s North Division last night
Wheeling 4, Maine 1
Savannah 5, Norfolk 4
Tahoe 5, Greensboro 1
Reading 7, Adirondack 3
BOX SCORE
Trois-Rivières 0 0 0 – 0
Worcester 0 1 1 – 2
1st Period- No Scoring.Penalties-Dunlap Tr (high-sticking), 9:22; Callin Wor (hooking), 11:13.
2nd Period-1, Worcester, Hatten 2 (Donhauser, Miotto), 12:31. Penalties-Callin Wor (holding), 8:54; Martin Tr (interference), 10:17.
3rd Period-2, Worcester, Callin 2 (Odelius, Suda), 8:12. Penalties-Schachle Wor (slashing), 2:57; Hora Wor (holding), 8:47; Odelius Wor (holding), 12:13.
Shots on Goal-Trois-Rivières 12-7-13-32. Worcester 9-12-4-25.
Power Play Opportunities-Trois-Rivières 0 / 5; Worcester 0 / 2.
Goalies-Trois-Rivières, Gaudreau 3-2-0-2 (25 shots-23 saves). Worcester, Tikkanen 2-2-0-1 (32 shots-32 saves).
A-3,221
Referees-David Lilly (25), -.
Linesmen-Benjamin Lord (98), Noah Merrow (57).
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