Kilkenny City Storm 11 Whalers 2

Saturday 8th March 2008

No that isn’t a typo, no it’s not de-ja-vu, it happened again, but in a different way.

The Kilkenny Storm iced a similar team to last time in defence but they had some obvious changes in the offense. Right from the word go you could see they had iced a stronger offense but the Whalers skaters and keepers were up for the challenge. The first few minutes were played mostly in the Whalers defensive zone which was not good as we were chasing the puck around looking for the interception to clear the zone and change. All the hard work in the defensive zone didn’t pay off unfortunately as the Storm jumped to an early 3 – 0 lead. The Whalers heads dropped but they never gave up, and held the storm to that lead for the rest of the first.

During the break Barry gave another motivation talk to lift spirits and push us on and pull it back. The second period started like the first, in the Whalers zone, but the defence held out for a few minutes with a few different shifts playing, until one really unfortunate shift when the Storm notched 3 goals. Whalers hard work throughout the rest of the period leaked two more goals leaving the Kilkenny Storm leading 8 – 0 going into the third period.

Without Gary’s drink motivation, Barry gave his words of wisdom, they worked. The Whalers went out and played the third period like the other two but got more out of it, something had changed. Throughout the third period the Whalers worked hard to keep the Storm from scoring, but unfortunately leaked another three. This aside the Whalers offense had something to use as motivation when Niall McEvoy once again showed that the Storm keeper was beatable. Later in the period after a clean face off win by Neil Black the puck came back to Mark Dunne who shot from the high slot, right side, over the glove of the Storm netminder and made it two for the Whalers.

The game ended 11 – 2. Congratulations to the Kilkenny Storm on their victory. My personal man of the match, well there is only one person it could be because he never gave up, Bart.

Is anyone else seeing a pattern in the man of the match? It’s starting to annoy me, come on people give me a reason not to give it to Bart!!!

Playoffs are there for the taking, let’s get them!!


Report by Graeme Bell (#26 Whalers)