Shortly after the opening period began, the Stingers lost John Hughes to
the penalty box for cross checking. After referee Jerry Dowling sent Hughs to the penalty
box the Stingers Rich Leduc mumbled "It looks like another bad night for
Cincinnati". Dowling immediately penalized Leduc with ungentlemanly like conduct and
a misconduct call. Head coach Terry Slater remarked about the officiating by Steve Dowling
"He seems to have a thing for us. If you look at the record we have a lot of
penalties every time he's called our games". As a result of the five-on-three
advantage that the Roadrunners had, Phoenix's right winger Frank Hughes scored. Leduc was
ON FIRE after the goal and came out of the box gunning for referee Jerry Dowling. Leduc
had to be restrained by teammates Dale Smedsmo and Dennis Sobchuk. Dowling smugly ejected
Leduc from the game.
The Roadrunners went on to score two
more goals in the first period. Both goals coming from the stick of left winger Jan
Popiel. Slater pulled Norm LaPointe from the Stingers net and replaced him with Jacques
Caron. That is when the Stingers took off. Dennis Sobchuk scored the first Stinger goal at
18:29 in the first period after taking a nice pass from Claude Larose. Barry Legge then
score the second goal after being fed the puck from Dale Smedsmo. The goal put the
Stingers within one goal.
The rest of the game was all
Cincinnati. Phoenix only managed six shots in the second and third periods. While the
Stingers had twenty five. Billy Steele scored the game tying goal in the second period
when he deflected in a shot from right in front of the Roadrunners net. The deflection
came after a Larose shot when Dudley had neatly cleared both defensemen away from the
mouth of the goal. Late in the third period Dennis Abgrall scored the game winning goal at
18:08. He scored after getting a nice pass from teammate Jamie Hislop and again Rick
Dudley setting it up by giving Hislop the puck.
After the game Billy Steele would state
in reference to Leduc's ejection from the game "Richie deserves a lot of credit for
standing up for what he thought was right. Dowling told us before the game that he was
going to come down on anyone who gave him any trouble".
The victory put the Stingers ahead of
the Racers by three points in the standings.
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