Ty Dilello
The Niverville Nighthawks led for most of the game but found a way to fall 5–4 in overtime to the Waywayseecappo Wolverines on Saturday night on the road. With their fourth straight loss, the Nighthawks stay in fourth place in the MJHL’s East Division with a record of 22–17–3.
It was a tale of two games as the Nighthawks were the best team for the first two periods, before Waywayseecappo clawed their way back into the contest. After 40 minutes, Niverville led 4–2 thanks to goals from Brett Tataryn, Adam Vigfusson, Luke McKenzie, and Luke McCrady.
In the third period, the Nighthawks found themselves in penalty trouble. They took six penalties, which led to two Wolvervine goals. Waywayseecappo tied the game and eventually scored the game winner a minute into overtime.
Raiden LeGall stopped 28 shots in the Nighthawks’ goal in the loss.
“It’s unfortunate, as we fell into penalty trouble in the third period, but that’s the way things go sometimes,” said Nighthawks head coach Kelvin Cech. “I thought we did a good job of being resilient, and I thought that we deserved better tonight. But the universe doesn’t care about that, and we just got to keep getting better.”
Cech noted that it was nice to have some of the club’s prospects out at practices over the past week, as some of the Nighthawks players were off competing at the MJHL-SJHL Showcase.
The Nighthawks are back in action with a home game against the Winnipeg Freeze on February 7. The puck drops at 7:00 p.m.
“We just want to continue competing and creating our offence the hard way,” said Cech. “Doing the little things that create chances. We can’t hope that we’ll score nice goals. We’ve got to play the right way, and we want to keep showing that resiliency every night.”