The Fort McMurray Oil Barons picked up their first win in a 3-game road trip last night over the Whitecourt Wolverines. It was a workman-like performance by the Barons, as they returned to the ice for a game for the the first time in 9 days. Fort McMurray dominated the on the scoreboard, winning the game 4-1, and leading in shots 39-20; yet the pace of play was much more back and forth than the scoreboard would indicate.
Reed Morison opened the scoring at 4:40 of the first off of a second chance from a Ryan Conroy rush. The Wolverines looked to make a game out of it by answering with a Bjorn Robinson point shot the was deflected by Easton Haygarth past Barons netminder Chris Curr. From there, it was all Oil Barons. Peter Tomaras would finish a brilliant tic-tac-toe play from Jarred White and Liam Izyk to close off scoring in the first period. Owen Kelly added to the MOB lead in the second, and then Reed Morisson was sprung on a partial break on a late powerplay to put the Barons up 4-1 at the end of 40 minutes. From there, the Barons played damage control, and limited the amount of chances the young Wolverines team had.
Both goaltenders were active, with Chris Curr having to make a couple sharp saves to keep his team in the lead. Tye Morin faced a lot of shots, and came up with several big stops of his own. Special teams played a small role in the Barons win, going 1 for 4 with the man advantage. The Wolverines were 0 for 2.
When asked about his team’s performance, head coach Tom Keca was pleased with the effort made, but notes there is still room for improvement.
“Anytime you can come into Whitecourt and get points is good. As we talked about in the pregame, sets you up for a little bit of a better weekend, you’re not chasing the rest of the two games. I thought that we did about 85% of the job. We had a lot of o-zone possession, we had a lot of puck movement, it all looked good, but we have to concentrate on that last 15% and create more good quality scoring chances.”
The Oil Barons and Wolverines will rematch tonight. Puck drop will be 7:30 p.m., the pre-game show begins on Country 93.3 at 7:15.
