The two sides couldn’t stop answering each other's tallies. After Mikulas Hovorka threaded in a point shot to open the scoring, Springfield responded just 16 seconds later and then snagged the lead less than a minute after that, only to have the Checkers pull back even before the first intermission.
Rasmus Asplund knocked home a loose puck on the power play late in the middle frame to push Charlotte ahead, but that advantage was short lived as the Thunderbirds drew the game back into a tie less than two minutes later, then started the third period by jumping back on top with a power-play strike of their own.
The Checkers had one more response in them, however, as Justin Sourdif found Ben Steeves in the slot two minutes later and the rookie forward buried it to knot the score once again and force overtime.
After a scoreless extra frame, the contest proceeded to a shootout. Charlotte netminder Ken Appleby turned aside the first two Springfield attempts, then John Leonard gave the home team the upper hand with a conversion in the bottom of round two. With a chance to end things on his shoulders, Appleby came away with a clutch save of Springfield’s final shooter and secured the win for the home side.
Come for the goal, stay for the world's feistiest celebration pic.twitter.com/D9N30ocjg6
— Charlotte Checkers (@CheckersHockey) December 18, 2024
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the gameIf you mark it on the calendar it was going to be a tough game regardless, and then obviously we had a depleted group and played short all the way through. We lost a guy in the first period and lost another guy in the second period. I give the guys a ton of credit. You look at opportunities to build some toughness throughout the year, and tonight we built it.
Kinnear on the back and forth nature of the game
It was one of those games that wasn’t always pretty and they’re going to score and you just claw and scratch. They score, we score. I don’t think you take a lot of the X’s and O’s out of it, to be honest with you. You look at what you did well, and I thought the guys had to really dig and dig in.
Kinnear on responding to adversity within this game
We’ve talked about it all year. There’s certain identity things, and that would be one of them. Hockey is not perfect. It’s not supposed to be, and it’s what makes our game great. You’re going to make mistakes, and it’s how you recover from that and teammates bail you out at times. A lot to like, but X’s and O’s and structure was not one of them.
Ben Steeves on the game
I think it was overall good, other than four goals in our net that were just our mistakes. I think our goals were hard-earned, but their goals were our mistakes, so we’ve just got to clean those up and we’d have a good win in regulation.
Steeves on responding to goals against
Geordie says ‘bend, don’t break,’ so if that does happen, be in the zone, play your position, do your job and do what you can to get the puck out and live another day.
Steeves on his goal
I had a couple of those coming down the hill tonight. On a couple of those I tried to go around the D but it wasn’t quite working, so I just thought I’d fire one through and it saw bottom right.
Steeves on the key to success in tomorrow’s rematch
Same way. We’re battling a little bit of injuries here, but we have a lot of depth, so just have everybody step up and get a win tomorrow.
