The Stingers were back at it with the New England Whalers after an
exhausting two week road trip. "I'm still tired from the road trip." Rich Leduc
would state.
|
© Courtesy of Cincinnati
Public Library. |
Team captain Rick Dudley chases after the
puck behind fallen Whaler Ron Busniuk. |
In the first period, it appeared
as if Leducs statement was accurate. The club played slow and seemed to lack the stuff to
get the team going. But Stingers Billy Steele finally kicked things in gear at 8:29 with a
goal during a power play. However, the Whalers answered with two straight goals before the
opening period expired. The first coming from Dave Keon. Keon's goal came during a power
play. While the second Whalers goal came from Brett Callighen. Calligans goal came after
he received a pass from former Stinger Pie McKenzie from behind the Stingers net.
Callighen then batted the puck past Norm LaPointe for the score.
During the second period there was
little offensive action on both ends of the rink. But Cincinnati's Blaine Stoughton
finally broke through by scored at 14:25 to tie the game up. Stoughton scored with a hard
shot from the slot after taking a slick pass from teammate Greg Carroll.
After the slow second period that saw
the Stingers have only five shots on goal, head coach Terry Slater needed to do something,
so he shuffled his lines. He reassembled the LSD line of Leduc, Stoughton and Dudley. He
put Billy Steele on a line with his penalty killing "killer bees" partners
Dennis Sobchuk and Claude Larose. And he put Jacques Locas on the same lines with rookies
Jamie Hislop and Peter Marsh. The shake up seemed to have worked.
Stoughton scored again in the third
period after a he backhanded a shot from right in front during a power play. The Stingers
added one more goal at 10:38 when Jacques Locas skated with the puck straight at Whalers
goalie Christer Abrahamsson and batted the puck past him for the score. It would be the
final goal of the game and the victory elevated the Stingers back into second place within
their respective division.
Locas, who had played pretty well in
the past few games, was initially on the trading block for most of the season. Terry
Slater mentioned "I felt he wasn't playing up to his capability". Locas was
pretty depressed about being bench and hearing about trade rumors in the media and from
his agent. "I was depressed. I was sitting on the bench and I knew the Stingers were
trying to trade me for the past month. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't sleep, I worried
about being traded". |
