The Flin Flon Bombers who appear to be a more confident group, used a strong first period last night to power to their fourth straight victory.
The Melfort Mustangs who were unbeaten in their last 13 grabbed a quick 1-0 lead, when scoring leader Travis Mayan broke in alone just 1:04 into the opening period and fired a nice wrist shot off the post to beat Adam Beukeboom and put Melfort up 1-0.
The Bombers shook it off and reeled off 4 straight goals from Chris Rauckman(24), Austin Evans(5),Brandon Switzer(4), and Brett Boehm who collected his first goal in a Bomber uniform.
Flin Flon took a 4-1 lead to the locker room after 1 and chased starting goaltender Richard Palmer from the net for the second time this season. With new goaltender Zach Degraves the Mustangs came out firing and scored 3 goals in the second to tie it at 4. Mayand added his second of the night and league leading 27th of the season, with other goals coming from Boyer and Robin.
Flin Flon would settle things down in the third period and both teams failed to score any more goals and would head to overtime for the fourth time in the 7 meetings this season.
Austin Calladine would have a great chance to win the game, but Degraves made a huge glove save on his slap shot just outside the left circle. It was Degraves best of the night after coming in the game to relieve Palmer.
Captain clutch, Dean Allison would not let his team be denied a second time in OT, when he skated up the ice on a 2 on 1 and sent a rocket over the left shoulder of Degraves sending the Bombers and the Whitney Forum into a frenzy with a 5-4 OT victory.
It was Allison's 11th goal of the year and helped Flin Flon keep their winning streak alive at 4. The Bomber record now stands at 2-3-1-1 against the league leading Mustangs with one more meeting between the two teams on February the 4th in Flin Flon.
I thought Adam Beukeboom was very solid in net for Flin Flon and recovered well after surrendering a goal just a minute into the opening period, stopping 37 out of 41 shots on the night. Melfort got to the front of the net a lot and Beukeboom was tested with lots of quality shots.
Beukeboom said he wasn't too concerned about giving up a goal that early in the game. "Honestly with the way the boys have been playing, it was just like okay we are down a goal, that doesn't mean we are out of it, nothing has changed. The boys bounced back very well so, for me it is the same as anything I let in a goal on the first or last shot of the game like Sunday, the focus for me is to always stop the next one."
They are all big wins at this time of the year and the Bombers have improved to: 19-7-5-4 and have closed the gap betwen them and the Hawks, with Flin Flon only 1 point behind Nipawin for second in the Sherwood. Both teams have played 35 games and still have to play each other 4 more times this season.
Flin Flon will now focus their efforts on the Notre Dame Hounds who come to town Saturday , which will be our first radio broadcast of 2015. We hit the air at 7:15 with the Murray GM Coach's Show and play by play at 7:30.
It will also be the January 10th CJHL trade deadline day, and Mike Reagan told me he would like to add at least 1 more defenseman to compliment an already talented group. It will be interesting to see what happens right across the league with a lot of teams still in it. We will have complete results for you on all the teams in the SJHL at flinflononline.com
