Kristian Petit scored twice and Adam Griffith made 29 saves to earn his first career shutout as the Airdrie Thunder won its third straight game, 4-0 over the High River Flyers, Oct. 14 at the Ron Ebbesen Arena.
Nick Plesa and Travis Wallan each added a goal to help bring the Thunder (5W-2L-1T) to within one point of the Heritage Junior Hockey League North Division-leading Three Hills Thrashers.
Despite missing defencemen Ryan Russell and Tannor Kocis, and losing Taylor Crossley to a game misconduct early in the second period, Airdrie managed to survive with only three blue liners.
“(Matt) Flette and (Alex) Hustad dropped back and both of them played well – they really helped us out,” said head coach Art Krusel. “We seemed to weather that storm, to the credit of the kids.”
Petit opened the scoring, with the eventual game-winner, 8:39 into the first period, with Crossley and Andrew Bergmann drawing assists. Plesa added another three minutes later, before Petit netted his fifth of the season with less than seven minutes to play in the first.
“I think this was a breakout game,” Petit said afterwards. “It was a rough start for my line – me, Bergmann and Wallan – but we’re starting to gel more now. Everyone’s starting to buy into what (assistant coach) Gareth (Barley) and Art are saying. It’s been kind of hard because we have so many new guys, guys coming down from Junior A, injuries – it’s all hard on team chemistry.”
“They’re certainly capable of being one of the top lines in the league,” Krusel said of Wallan, Petit and Bergmann.
Wallan added his seventh of the season on the power play, with only 34 seconds left in the game, to officially secure the victory – and Griffith’s fourth straight win in net.
“It was a pretty big deal to get the first shutout,” Griffith said. “The team played really well in front of me, so I think we all earned that win. I started watching the clock with about 10 minutes left, but I was pretty confident in the guys in front of me. They were playing really well defensively and were keeping a lot of the shots to the outside.”
“He’s right out of Midget, so it will be a big deal for him,” Krusel said.
Stringing wins together and boosting confidence is an important step for this team, Krusel said, as it is still searching for its identity.
“We’re still gelling as a team and it’s taking a little longer than normal this year because we’ve had so many injury issues early in the year,” he said. “But tonight, we had enough goals to win, so I told the guys ‘let’s keep it simple, let’s get out of this game with no injuries’ – and that’s what we did, so we’re pretty happy about it.”
The Thunder’s next game will be on Oct. 21 when the team hosts the Banff Academy Bears. Puck drop is 8 p.m. at the Ron Ebbesen Arena.
