It wasn’t pretty, but it was a win nonetheless for the Westlock Peewee Warriors in what was a high scoring affair against the Thorhild Titans on Saturday afternoon.
On Dec. 12, the Titans paid a visit to the Rotary Spirit Centre to take on their Westlock rivals in Tier 4 action of the 1660 Peewee Hockey League.
Coach Dwayne Casavant said it wasn’t his team’s best showing, but said they will take the two points anyways.
“It wasn’t our best effort, clearly,” Casavant admitted.
“They were the strong of the two teams for sure. We just ended up lucky.”
Goalie John Zeise faced 33 shots in the win and turned away 14 of 15 sent his way in the final frame.
“He put in a good effort,” Casavant said. “And we found a way to keep the goals coming.”
It was the visitors that found the score sheet first and took a 2-0 lead with less than 10 minutes off the clock.
But before heading to the dressing room at the intermission, the Warriors responded with three straight to take the 3-2 lead.
Thomas Oloske notched the first Westlock goal, while Dylan Biddiscombe followed it up with a power play marker less than a minute later to make it a 2-2 game.
Oloske added one more to pull ahead 3-2.
From there it was a seesaw battle – Thorhild tied it up at 3-3 at the midway point of the second, but Jonathan Servage reclaimed the Warriors’ lead less than a minute later.
The Titans added one more to knot the score at 4-4. The teams headed to the second intermission deadlocked.
Neither team scored in the first half of the third, but Servage’s second kicked off a flurry of action late in the game.
The Warriors’ 5-4 lead lasted all of two minutes when Thorhild tied the game 5-5 with 6:59 left in the game.
But the stalemate didn’t last with Cory Nestorovich scoring the game winner with 6:05 remaining.
Despite winning, Casavant said he would like to have seen a better all-around effort from his team.
“Our positional play was really weak,” he said. “For whatever reason, we were leaving guys open in front of the net, watching the puck … and they won all the battles. We just have to go back to basic hockey.”
With two weeks off between games, Casavant said the down time likely contributed to their weak effort.
“We just showed that rust,” he said. “It’s a busy time of year and it just showed.”
The win marked Westlock’s fourth in a row and improves the team’s record to 5-3.
