Phoenix picks up pair of wins in weekend marathon with Victoria

PHOENIX , AZ – The Phoenix Roadrunners opened their ECHL season with a three game set against the Victoria Salmon Kings on home ice.   The season opened with a pair of impressive wins (7-1, 2-1), but the weekend ended with a tough losses (4-2).   In the opening game, the Roadrunners jump started their 2008-09 ECHL season with a convincing 7-1 win over the Victoria Salmon Kings on Friday, October 17.     Seven Roadrunners notched points led by Matt Fornataro’s two goals & one assist in his Phoenix debut.   Teammate Colin Sinclair also scored two goals

in his first game with Phoenix.   In their Roadrunners’ debut, Kimbi Daniels and Rory Rawlyk each chipped in with two assists, while Ashton Rome added a goal and an assist.     Second-year teammates Gino Guyer (two assists) and Daniel Sisca goal finished off the scoring and ended Salmon Kings’ goalie Jonathan Boutin’s 22 save night at 11:27 of the third period. Boutin was then replaced by Todd Ford for the balance of the game.   Former Roadrunner Sean O’Connor deflected the only goal to get by Roadrunners netminder Craig Kowalski at 17:26 of the first to tie the game at one.     Kowalski finished with 40 saves to earn the games number two star.   A frustrated Olivier Labelle, who registered 10 of the 40 shots saved by Kowalski, mixed it up with Colin Sinclair with less than a minute to go for the only real fireworks of the night.   Saturday’s rematch started out reminiscent of Elton John’s famous anthem “Saturday night’s alright for fighting”, as Victoria’s Olivier Labelle and Darryl Lloyd ganged up on Ashton Rome 44 seconds into the game as he was leaving the ice, but Rome came out on the short end with 6 penalty minutes, while both Victoria players received two apiece.   Phoenix ’s Andrew Desjardins scored on the power play at the 8:25 mark of the first period, Desjardins put the puck past the Salmon Kings’ Todd Ford for a 1-0 lead.   Roadrunners Captain Mitch Carefoot was hitting everything that moved and the Salmon Kings’ Captain Wes Goldie took offense. The two mixed it up at 15:45 of the first period.   Goldie took the extra two for starting the fight.   Just 8 seconds into the second period, Labelle again went after Rome and sat for an additional two for instigating.   Rome suffered cuts to the face and missed most of the second getting repaired.   Ford went out to shove away one of the Phoenix forwards camped out in front and didn’t recover fast enough as rookie Matt Fornataro scored his third of the season unassisted at 3:52 of the third period.   Matt Kelly scored courtesy of a Chris St. Jacques assist at 4:47 to cut the Phoenix lead to 2-1, but that’s as close as the Salmon Kings got. Ford finished with 27 saves while Roadrunners goaltender Gerald Coleman had 25.   Sunday’s game saw the Roadrunners come out flat the first half of the game and never looked back.     As was noticeable all of last season, it appeared conditioning came up short as Phoenix fell behind 3-0 on two goals by Olivier Labelle and one by Dylan Yeo.      Kimbi Daniels scored two power-play goals for the Roadrunners at 13:15 and 16:41 of the second to get the Roadrunners back into the game. The first goal was a deflection of a Rob Dmytruk one-timer.   From there on the Roadrunners made a game of it and had a chance to tie it up late in the game. The best opportunity for Phoenix was on a 6-on-3 advantage in the last 15 seconds of the game.   An outstanding play by a Roadrunners defenseman along the blueline along the wall kept the puck inside the zone, but it went right to the blade of Wes Goldie’s stick, shot the puck down the ice for an empty net goal unassisted at 19:58.   Todd Ford of Victoria made 25 saves on the night while Craig Kowalski stopped 22 of the 25 shots he faced.   Contact the author at Richard.hopkins@prohockeynews.com