The San Antonio Spurs came close to beating the Heat despite the absence of 4 of their top 5 scorers … oh wait, wrong Heat. I’m talking about the Abbotsford Heat, an Abbotsford Heat team that is scary good at home. In fact going into yesterday’s game they had not lost in regulation at home, and at the end of yesterday’s game? They still hadn’t lost at home. They are now 9-0-1-1 at home so far this season.
As for trends on the Bulldogs side, they have continued their futility streak to 15 games without scoring the first goal. Going into the game Bulldogs fans had high hopes that Hamilton could compete with the top ranked team in the AHL, after all, one of the Heat’s 3 regular season losses came at the hands of these very same Bulldogs earlier in the season. That hope was quickly extinguished.
In the first period the Bulldogs were outshot 8-3 and outscored 2-0. Ben Street and Ben Walter beat Robert Mayer in a 33 second span to give the Heat the 2-0 lead after one.
The second period did not hold a much better fate for the Bulldogs. They gave up two more goals, off the sticks of Quinton Laing and Roman Horak, and were once again outshot; this time by a margin of 9-5.
But hey, at least it was an incline for the Bulldogs. Every period they managed a few more shots, in the third they recorded 8 to the Heat’s 11. One of those shots even managed to beat Barry Brust. Gabriel Dumont scored on a shorthanded 2 on 1. It might be worth mentioning that Dumont was actually the “1” on the play, despite being outnumbered he split the defense and popped in his own rebound. A truly spectacular individual effort to put the Dogs’ on the board but not enough to get the win. Steve McCarthy would add another goal for the Heat to clinch the 5-1 win.
The Dogs’ will have a second chance to crack the Heat’s record today; they’ll face off against Abbotsford at 7pm Pacific time.
