Ty Dilello
The Niverville Nighthawks got back in the win column on Wednesday night at the CRRC with a come-from-behind 6–5 victory over the Winnipeg Freeze to snap a four-game losing streak. With the win, the Nighthawks stay in fourth place in the MJHL’s East Division with a record of 23–17–3.
It was a game the Nighthawks needed to win. After getting on the board in the first two minutes, Winnipeg replied with a pair of goals to make it 2–1 after the first period. The Freeze would make it 3–1 early in the second period before Niverville stormed back with a trio of goals to take a 4–3 lead.
However, Winnipeg came back with a pair of goals to go up 5–4 in the third period.
The Nighthawks took over from there, tying the game before scoring the game-winning goal in the final minutes of the contest.
The offence was spread around, with goals scored by Josh Mettimano, Michael Debrito, Nathan Brown, Ethan Kelly, Brett Tataryn, and Alex Walicki.
Keegan Gordon stopped 22 shots in the Nighthawks’ goal in the win.
“This was a big one for us. After losing a couple in a row, we’ve fallen behind a little bit, so wins are very necessary for us now,” said Nighthawks captain Brett Tataryn. “We strive on our first shift after a goal against being our best shifts of the game. We used our frustration towards putting the puck in the net.”
“We definitely showed a lot of resiliency,” added forward Brendan Bottem. “It would have been easy to just hang our heads when we went down a couple goals, but we put our heads down and went to work. Guys on our team stepped up huge with some goals so it was nice to see.”
The Nighthawks are back in action on Friday night with a road game against the Virden Oil Capitals. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m.
“We need to limit the odd man rushes and clean up our defensive zone for next game,” said Bottem. “We left Gordo out to dry a few times tonight, so that definitely cannot happen moving forward. If we can get better at that, we will be successful.”