Tri-City Americans (1-1-0-0) forward Sasha Mutala opened the scoring against the Seattle Thunderbirds (1-0-0-0) midway through the first period on a power-play goal. The man advantage came after a scrap between Cade McNelly and Landon Roberts where McNelly received two minutes for instigating. Seattle’s slow start proved to be their undoing in the game.
“There’s no easy games in the league. I can’t imagine why, at this point in the season, we think any game is going to be easy. I think we were feeling ourselves a little bit too much. There was a lot of uncharacteristic stuff, some guys not on the same page, a little bit of selfishness. It was disappointing, and not good enough,” Seattle head coach Matt O’Dette said of his group’s overall performance.
Seattle started the second period with more energy than they did in the first period, creating sustained pressure in the zone and some decent scoring opportunities. However, penalty trouble would put Seattle down two men, allowing Tri-City to add to their lead off a goal from former Tbird Samuel Huo. Seattle responded, regaining momentum and spending more time in the offensive zone.
“I thought our special teams were really strong. Our penalty kill, guys were sacrificing themselves and reading plays. We just had a couple of breakdowns in the third that gave them some momentum and let them get back in the game, but we held it to what we wanted,” said Tri-City head coach Kelly Buchberger.
The Thunderbirds started the third period with a sense of urgency that was missing from the previous two periods, spending time in the Americans zone and creating power-play opportunities. Andrej Kukuca scored Seattle’s lone goal on the night off a wrist shot through traffic that beat the otherwise perfect Warm.
“He was our MVP last year, and every day he comes to compete. He was locked in tonight. He’s a professional even at this young age and gives us a chance to win every night,” Buchberger said of his starting goaltender.
Sasha Mutala iced the game on an empty-net goal with just under two seconds to go in the third.
The Seattle Thunderbirds will be back in action on Wednesday, October 2nd as they travel to Kamloops for their first road game of the season against the Blazers.
Lightning Strikes
- Samuel Huo scored what would be the game-winning goal in the second period.
“He put in a lot of work over the summer. He’s thinking the game, and he’s got confidence in his game, and he has developed good chemistry with Sasha Mutala,” Buchberger said of his current top-line center.
- Sasha Mutala had two goals and an assist
- Beck Warm stopped 31 of 32 shots in the win
- Roddy Ross stopped 21 of 23 shots in the loss
- Andrej Kukuca scored for the second consecutive game
