Spiders play hockey again

Feb. 18, 2023

The Spiders bounced back from last week’s debacle to shut out the Mallards 5-zip.

The Spiders had a full bench Saturday evening for the second game of the season series with the Minnesota Mallards. The first game went the Spiders’ way in front of sub goalie Andrew Enestvedt. Tonight at Charlie Brown’s Barn, it was new (to the Spiders) sub goalie Pat McCarthy getting the call.

The Mallards, who sit in fifth place ahead of the Spiders, and sport two of the top three goal scorers at the C3 level (Second place: #62, W. Hebert, 17G; Third place: #18 E. Chow: 14G), added zero to their totals tonight, as the Spiders played shutdown hockey in front of McCarthy, allowing only 13 shots, which McCarthy stopped them all (except one, which was waved off due to his bucket coming loose in a goal-mouth scrum).

At the other end of the Highland ice, the Spiders dominated in the offensive zone, tapping in rebound after rebound off the Mallard netminder.

The only stat where the Spiders fell behind was in the critical PIM tally, getting outwhistled by the Mallards 4PIM to 2PIM, thus saving the typical carpal tunnel wear and tear of the scorekeeper, and thanks to the holiday weekend staff shortages, that role tonight was performed as an emergency callup by Paul Berman’s kid Marc, who kindly only wrote down Spiders’ goals the entire night.

Final score: 5-rip.

The Spiders, once the stats are entered, will be back tied for fifth place with the Mallards, and will own the critical head-to-head tiebreaker against that team having taken the season series, and make it a clean sweep on the franchise series dating back to last season, at 4-donut.

Next up for the Spiders, after a holiday hiatus, the 7th-place Arctic Wolves. The last game was a 3–2 victory for the Spiders. Puck drop is Monday, Feb. 27, 8:35 p.m. at the House that Willard Ikola Built (for cake eaters).