FAYETTEVILLE, NC – Entering last night’s game against the Rail Yard Dawgs, the Marksmen found themselves on a six game losing streak. Going almost the whole month of December without a win brought out a lot of emotion in the young Marksmen team. In the locker room preparing for the game ahead, the players knew things needed to be different. Things were different too, as three goals were scored on the power play for the Marksmen. Marksmen Head Coach Jesse Kallechy was really impressed with his team’s performance last night, praising them in all areas.
“I thought tonight our forecheck was good, I thought defensively we were good. Obviously our power play was really good tonight, going three-for-four was good,” Kallechy said about his team’s performance. “We had contributions in all areas, top to bottom it was good. Our D-core, played their best game in a while and Dillon (Kelley) made some great saves when we needed him.”
Tim Kielich had an impressive performance last night, scoring two of the three power play goals and getting an assist on the third.
“The funny part was, it wasn’t Tim’s best game,” said Kallechy. “He’s played better games than that probably in the past five or six but he kinda got rewarded tonight. I didn’t think he had his legs early, he was kinda fighting the puck. Credit to him, he simplified his game and he started to put his head down and work. Generally when you put in the work, good things happen. He hasn’t been on the power play in a couple weeks. We just kinda threw him on this morning after morning skate. We just needed a guy and Tim (Kielich) was kinda the guy and all of a sudden he gets two power play goals and an assist.”
Wednesday’s game came just a day after the Marksmen celebrated the Holiday with family. Some players even returned to the All-American City early Wednesday morning.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I was really nervous before the game,” Kallechy said about his thoughts going into last night’s game fresh off a break. “I know how these games can go sometimes. So for the guys to come out and put up that kind of effort, I knew that Roanoke was in the same boat and they had to travel. You just hope for the best, sometimes you say your prayers and hope for the best. Luckily, the guys were hungry tonight. They were hungry tonight and it’s good to get in the win column that’s for sure. Now we gotta get greedy, we gotta go on a little bit of a run here. We talked about our goal, we considered Christmas break the first half of the year. We talked about that we wanted our record to be the best record in the league after Christmas break, we’re 1-0-0 right now so we’re happy with it.”
Cody Brown scored the first goal for the Marksmen, followed by goals from Alfred Johansson, Jake Hauswirth and the pair from Tim Kielich. Eric Witzel was the star on the Roanoke side, scoring a hat-trick in a losing effort to the Marksmen. Dillon Kelley put on a show, playing his heart out for sixty-minutes. Kelley had 22 saves on the night, looking ready for the second half of the season. The Rail Yard Dawgs spent a total of eight minutes in the penalty box, proving to be the achilles heel for the Dawgs last night.
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