BILOXI, Miss. – It is said that defense wins championships. If that is the case, the Huntsville Havoc are very close to their first SPHL President’s Cup title after just one game.
Wednesday night at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum, the Havoc rode a three-goal second period, timely power play scoring and the continued hot goaltending of Dan McWhinney to a 3-2 win over the Mississippi Surge in Game 1 of the best-of-five finals. Game 2 is set for Thursday night in Biloxi.
“Obviously we didn’t come out ready maybe between the ears as well as we should have and they buried one on us real quick. That was a bit of a setback
Huntsville%27s Chris Myers (photo courtesy of Huntsville Havoc).
Most of the fans in attendance at the MCC had just settled into their seats when the Surge struck. Right off the opening face-off, Mississippi stole the puck in the Huntsville end. Chris Greene got the disc to Jeff Grant who beat a surprised McWhinney to give the home team a 1-0 lead a mere ten seconds into the contest. It was also a record-setting score, eclipsing the old record of quickest goal at the start of a playoff game by five seconds.
After the shock of the very fast score, the game settled into the expected battle of the net minders. Mississippi’s Bill Zaniboni was tested by shots from the sticks of Vladimir Hartinger and Mike Carter on an early Havoc power play. McWhinney shook off being beaten on the first shot to stand tall, repelling five shots in a two minute stretch midway through the period. By the time the horn ending the period sounded, Mississippi had a 9-5 shot advantage and the 1-0 lead.
Despite the lead, Surge coach Steffon Walby had several concerns at the intermission.
“Here we are, we score in the first ten seconds. Then we get a penalty kill opportunity which we killed. Then we get three consecutive power plays that we don’t even get three shots on,” he said. “They forced us to change our game plan. Not me but the players. The players felt they needed to change the game plan and that was sort of an overall summary of the game.”
The second period opened with Huntsville taking its fourth straight penalty and giving Mississippi yet another chance to extend the lead. Unlike the first, the Surge got three shots on net during the man advantage but McWhinney was able to hold the fort.
“It was huge (the penalty killing). We don’t want to take the chance of giving them seven power play opportunities in another game because it’s just a matter of time before their power play gets clicking,” Murphy said.
The penalty killing bought some time and the offense finally broke onto the scoreboard thanks to the power play. With Mississippi’s Greene in the box, it took just six seconds for Mike MacDonald to win a draw back to Jeff Winchester who whistled a shot past Zaniboni to tie the score at the 4:59 mark.
The Surge took back the momentum 11:02 mark. Following some back and forth action, Jack Wolgemuth sent the puck to Matthew Larke who set up Greene for his third goal of the post-season to put Mississippi back in front. The pendulum then quickly swung back to the Havoc side 19 seconds later as Chris Myers got loose and put a backhander home for his first goal and point of the playoffs to knot the score at 2-2.
“I normally have a go-to line that I throw out after a goal. What happened was that they all got caught up ice. They got caught in the moment and before you know it, their fourth guy who was a defenseman jumped up into the rush and now we’re playing catch-up,” Walby said. “It was a four-on-three and there’s an open man and he’s wide open. I mean 7-11 – he was wide open.”
Special teams would play a role in what would be the game-winning goal. Mississippi was hit with overlapping penalties late in the second. The Surge killed off the first penalty (including a 30-second two-man advantage) but with half a minute left on the second call, the Havoc struck. Zaniboni made a save on a shot by Andrew Schembri but the rebound came out in front. McCreary worked to get a second shot which the Surge net minder also stopped. Again the puck came loose but this time Travis Kauffeldt got to it and popped it home at the 16:00 mark to give Huntsville the lead.
“They were playing an umbrella with two guys in front and their guys, those two guys in front, wanted to score more than we wanted to keep it out of the net. They worked harder, they were hungrier and they got rewarded for it,” Walby said.
Heading into the final period, Walby and his Surge team was still quite confident despite being behind. Huntsville was able to clamp down on Mississippi’s offense, giving McWhinney good looks at the puck and making sure there weren’t any juicy rebounds. Even with two power play chances, the Surge were held to six shots in the third. The Havoc recorded just three shots on Zaniboni in the stanza but as it turned out they didn’t need any more thanks to the defensive effort.
After the game, Walby was understandably frustrated by both Huntsville’s defensive effort and his own team’s lack of scoring chances in the last period.
“We had 26 shots on net and seven power plays and even if we averaged two shots per power play, we would have had more than half of our shots but we didn’t. They don’t give up second shots or second chance opportunities. They clear their house pretty good,” he said. “We’re not doing the right things to get more than six shots. We were doing them in the first period and we out shot them but they tightened up and they clogged the neutral zone. They forced us to change our game plan. Kudos to them.”
In the other locker room, Murphy was pleased to an extent with the effort but cautioned that the series is still very far from being over.
“Their guys are great players. They’re a high-offense team. Doing it (shutting Mississippi down) for one game is great but now our challenge is making sure we do it again tomorrow (Thursday) night,” Murphy said. “One game is one game. Our goal in the series is to get better every game. We didn’t play our best tonight and our challenge is to make sure we play better than we played tonight and whatever the outcome is will be the outcome.”
Game notes…Huntsville was 2-for-5 on the power play in Game 1 while Mississippi was 0-for-7…For the game, the Surge out shot the Havoc 26-22…As it did last year, the SPHL is using a two-referee system for the finals. Brent Coulombe and Curtis Marouelli drew the assignment for the opener…Grant’s goal at :10 was the second time Huntsville had been victimized that way this playoff season. Matt Whitehead of Pensacola did it to the Havoc at :15 of the first period in game one of the first round…Attendance for Game 1 was 1,988.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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