Despite finding themselves in a hole late in the first following Hartford’s game-opening tally, the Checkers broke their scoring drought courtesy of an Ethan Keppen strike and pulled the contest into a tie.
That deadlock would hold for a long stretch of play, but Hartford broke things back open early in the third with a quick flurry of two tallies over the stretch of 69 seconds. The Checkers pushed furiously down the stretch, narrowing the gap back to a single goal thanks to a Henry Bowlby marker on the power play, but they couldn’t find the equalizer before the buzzer sounded and closed out the 3-2 defeat.
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the gameIt was a better effort by us. It was an honest effort from everybody, we just fell on the short end of it. We stopped playing there on the one goal, and you have to check well to be able to get chances. On their third goal we just sat back a little bit. You’ve got to go make things happen. An honest effort, we just fell short in a one-goal game. A play here and there, you look at their first goal we have a shooting position with numbers and it ends up in a breakaway and in the back of our net. We’re not going to win them all, but the effort was way better tonight than it was yesterday.
Kinnear on what he saw from his team as it tried to tie the game late
A team that was playing to make things happen, playing the right way and on their toes making plays, it just didn’t go in obviously. It’s a goalie that was in the Stanley Cup Playoffs last year and he's a tough goalie to beat and he’s good for a reason. I’d like to see us shoot a little bit more, but obviously they got the job done and we didn’t.
Kinnear on how to help a goaltender that has not played much in Berube
Compete. I thought we played the right way tonight, but usually when you take a night off and play the right way you don’t always get the results you want. You’ve got to string a bunch together. I was just glad that we were back to our identity.
Kinnear on moving forward
Nothing changes for me. We just constantly want to learn and respect the process. There’s a process to everything. You want to learn from what happened the night before and we want to learn from what happened today. We’ll take a day of rest tomorrow, because honestly it’s been an honest effort from the group. A tough road trip right after Christmas, 12 days on the road, and I’m proud of the effort of a lot of the guys off that road trip. It’s a pretty good record, and if you look at our group, we’ve missed a lot of pieces within that. Nasher was gone to the Spengler Cup and we won three of four games without Nasher. Sourdif has been out. Games before Christmas against Providence and going to Hershey, top team. I’m completely proud of the effort, that doesn’t want to get lost because all of the sudden you lose a couple of games off a 12-day road trip. I’m proud of the guys. We have a lot of work to do, but there’s a lot of good stuff there and we want to keep moving forward and keep getting better.
