Mark Berry
Special to the Mirror
The Campbell River Storm managed to capture all four points after a pair of challenging games during week 20 of the VIJHL regular season.
They shutout the Nanaimo Buccaneers 3-0 in a rough affair and followed that up with a 5-4 nail biting victory over the Islanders.
Storm Captain, Gage Colpron, said after the Kerry Park win, “That was a big weekend for us, they’re the third and fourth place teams in the league and they’re good teams, we had to bring a full one-twenty.” He added, “You can’t afford to take your foot off the pedal for a minute. I think we worked hard for six periods and that’s why we came out on top.”
It was a costly night for the team on Thursday at the Nanaimo Ice Centre. Within a minute of scoring what would be the game winning goal, at 3:19 of the first period, Braeden Cyra was knocked out of the game. While gathering the puck behind his own net he received a jolting hit from Buccaneer forward, Patrick Poets.
The twenty year old received medical attention, including stitches, and will be out of the Campbell River line-up for an undetermined period of time.
Following the hit, the game took on a nasty tone with over 210 penalty minutes and numerous ejections.
Keenan Scardina continued his scoring ways picking up a nice goal early in the third period. After receiving a pass from Carter Hikichi behind the opposition net, Scardina weaved his way to the faceoff circle and fired a shot over the shoulder of goalie Alex Orth.
Josh Coblenz would finish the night’s scoring midway through the frame, on the power play, off a Colin Blake rebound.
The newest Storm player, Jake Mullen, made his debut on the road in Nanaimo and acquitted himself well turning aside 23 shots and receiving first star honours for his effort.
On Friday night, the Storm edged the visiting Kerry Park Islanders on a late goal from Colpron. It was his third goal of the night and tied him for second with Karl Hagg (2009 season) on the team’s all-time goal scoring leaderboard at 108. Jason Jaques (2004 season) leads all with 128 goals in his four seasons with Campbell River.
Kerry Park came back twice from two goal deficits and thanks to the incredible goaltending of Chase Anderson were in a position to force overtime.
Colpron’s winner came with just 29 seconds left in regulation and launched the 972 fans out of their seats.
On a turnover in the neutral zone, Alex Rosolowsky pushed the puck into the Islanders zone where the captain took over in typical Colpron fashion.
Head Coach, Lee Stone, talked about his star player after the game, “He makes me looks good. It’s pretty nice when you can put out a guy like that, he makes a one handed toe-drag and goes short side shelf.” For Colpron, it was his 44th goal of the season, tops in the league.
Christian Brandt also had a strong night picking up two goals, his twelfth and thirteenth.
Next action for the Storm is a Friday home game against the Westshore Wolves.