Despite putting up several chances out of the gate, the home side found themselves in a two-goal hole before the midway point of the first thanks to a pair of quick strikes by the Bruins.
After having Ludovic Waeber relieve Spencer Knight between the pipes at that point the Checkers settled in, and halfway through the middle frame Zac Dalpe cut into the deficit and electrified the building with a historic tally. Collecting the puck on a breakaway, Dalpe ripped a shot that beat the Providence netminder to pick up his 124th goal in a Charlotte sweater - giving him sole possession of the franchise record.
The Bruins stole back the momentum quickly in the third when Jayson Megna found the back of the net less than a minute in, but a seeing-eye wrister from Lucas Carlsson pulled the Checkers back within striking distance before the period hit the four-minute mark.
The Checkers continued to push, but Providence once again had an answer - reclaiming their multi-goal advantage minutes later and holding off any other response from Charlotte en route to the 4-2 final.
Chills. pic.twitter.com/UDtzlOjkci
— Charlotte Checkers (@CheckersHockey) February 4, 2024
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the gameI thought it was a good hockey game. I thought we played well. The second period was one of the best periods all year. We didn’t get rewarded for our work tonight.
Kinnear on getting out of this stretch
Just stick with it. I think you’ve got to continue to do the right thing. Everybody talks about confidence. If you work hard, you get success and confidence gets built. You’ve just got to continue to work hard until you get that success, and then your confidence will build as an individual and as a team. I thought there were a lot of really good efforts tonight. If you look at our schedule, we played a three-in-three on the road, play Wednesday in Hartford, come back here, play Friday, play a real physical game, back here in the second period and those guys laid it all on the line. I thought we played a heck of a game, so it shows you a lot about the group. If things don’t go your way you just continue to work hard, do the right thing and you’ll eventually be rewarded. I don’t know when that’s going to be, but if you keep doing the right things you’ll be rewarded. I thought the group played very hard tonight, but the bottom line is we need everybody going all the time. We don’t have everybody going all the time right now, but that will get built over time as long as the work ethic is there.
Kinnear on Zac Dalpe’s milestone goal
It’s big. It means you’ve been in the league a long time and scored a lot of goals, but right now we’re at the point where we’re talking about the team, and we need everybody going and it’s about the team at this point.
