BRAMPTON, ON – The Jacksonville Icemen will play in three school day specials this season, with start times of 11 a.m. or earlier. Their home school day game is next week but the first of their two road school day games came Wednesday morning as the Icemen traveled north of the border for the only time this regular season to play the Brampton Beast.
If the final result was any indication, the Icemen may want to play even more morning games as goalie Jamie Philips and Jacksonville shut out the Beast 5-0 for the first win in franchise history.
The contest was the sixth game of the season for the Icemen and Philips started all of them. Opposing Philips in goal Wednesday for Brampton was Andrew D’Agostini, who came into the game with a 2-1-0-1 record. Brampton’s record entering the contest was 2-6-1-1 while Jacksonville was 0-4-1.
Jacksonville opened the scoring at the 14:34 of the first when Jan Kostalek, who was assigned to Jacksonville by the Manitoba Moose the day before, scored his first of the season. Assists on the goal went to Alexandre Goulet and Emerson Clark. That would be the only scoring of the period. The period did see 20 minutes in penaties, the bulk coming on fighting majors to Jacksonville’s Garet Hunt and Brampton’s Stefan Fournier just 1:06 into the game. Brampton outshot the Icemen 14-9 for the period.
The Icemen would extend the lead to two by also scoring the only goal of the second period when the Icemen’s Hunt scored at 17:20, with the only assist going to Cameron Critchlow. With Hunt leaving the penalty box following a penalty, Critchlow made a perfect stretch pass, sending Hunt in alone where he beat D’Agostini. As it turned out, the second period might have been called called “the Garet Hunt section” of the game because two of the three penalties in the period were both called on Hunt. The third was called on Brampton’s Brandon Marino. The Beast outshot the Icemen 12-8 in the second and had an advantage of 26-17 heading to the final frame.
Jacksonville then proceed to put the game out of reach early in the third when Bobby McIntyre recorded his fourth of the season at 2:08 on assists from Elgin Pierce and Brendan Collier. At the 13:23 mark, Emerson Clark grabbed a rebound in the crease and recorded his first goal of the season on assists from Hunt and Goulet.
Then, in an attempt to get back in the game, the Beast pulled D’Agostini for an extra man which did not work as the Icemen tallied an empty net goal by Critchlow, his second of the season. The assists on the score went to McIntyre and Hunt. The game ended soon after that, sending the school kids back to class disappointed with a shutout loss.
Icechips: Garet Hunt racked up the Gordie Howe hat trick for the game – a goal, assist and fighting major… Attendance for the game at the Powerade Centre was 4,234. The building capacity is listed as 5,000… The Icemen outshot the Beast in the third period 18-8 and ended up outshooting the Beast for the game 35-34. Jamie Philips was named the first star of the game, Garet Hunt got the second star and Brampton’s Andrew D’Agostini was named the third star… Both Jacksonville and Brampton ended up with 23 penalty minutes for the game… Jacksonville continues its five game road trip Friday night in New Hampshire against the Manchester Monarchs. Brampton’s next game is also on Friday night when they host the Norfolk Admirals.
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