Chris Clegg
South Peace News
The weekend before the Falher Pirates made a trip southeast to play their arch-rivals, the High Prairie Regals, Pirates’ coach Dan Aubin said they would be ready to play.
Wow! Were they ever!
The Pirates whipped the hometown Regals 14-1 to break out of an early season goal scoring funk. The Pirates led 4-0 after one period and 9-0 after two as they dominated the game with their speed, for which the Regals had no answer.
It was the 48th game Falher has played in High Prairie since the start of the 1989 season and only once have the Pirates returned to the Honey Capital with a larger margin of victory. It came on Nov. 10, 2011 when the Pirates scored 10 power play goals in a 19-4 rout. The 10 PPGs are the most any team has scored in an NPHL game since 1989 when records were tracked.
Isaiah Letentre led the attack with three goals and two assists. Jordan McTaggart added five points of his own on the strength of two goals and three assists.
Eric Dentinger and Wyatt Noskey each scored twice while singles came of the sticks of Cruz Cote, Rob Lemay, Trevor Tokarz, Aaron Kuhn and Josh Sylvain. Walker Cote also enjoyed a fine night by adding five assists.
The first five minutes were fairly even but after that it was all Pirates. McTaggart’s power play goal seemed to open the floodgates as the Pirates scored four times in just under eight minutes and the rout was on.
Shots were indicative of play after the first five minutes. The Pirates outshot the Regals 15-10 in the first period, and 13-5 in the second when they outscored the Regals 5-1. Shots on goal in the game favoured the Pirates 40-22.
Every aspect of the game was near perfect as far as the Pirates were concerned. In addition to McTaggart’s power play goal, Letendre, Kuhn and Dentinger all scored with the man advantage as the Pirates clicked on four of seven chances. They also killed off all three High Prairie power plays to remain perfect in the season, killing off all 12 chances.
The only damper on an otherwise perfect evening was Lloyd Ah-Kim-Nachie’s second period goal, which broke the shutout bid of goaltend Chris Key.
The Pirates host he Valleyview Jets Nov. 15 before going to Fort St. John the next night to clash with the Flyers.