5-2 over Midland — Golden Hawks find a winning groove

September 27, 2013 · 0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart
The Caledon Golden Hawks notched their second win of the season after leaving the ice with a 5-2 win over the Midland Flyers Sunday night at Caledon East arena.
Opening the scoring in the first period on goals from Christian Bonaldi and Kyle Lee, the Caledon squad notched a third early in the second period from Daniel Cafagna.
They seemed to be more under control than their last home game, which saw three players ejected. This time, they concentrated on playing the game and with the exception of a major penalty in the first period, they took no penalties the rest of the match.
To be fair, in summarizing the game, the Midland squad didn’t have a single minute assessed against them.
But it’s still a lot better than the last home game that saw the Hawks take a huge rap sheet in infractions, including a double minor for spearing in the second period.
That kind of play won’t win games, but the squad was under control for the Midland game.
The Flyers responded with a single in the second period, but two more Caledon goals in the third from Bonaldi and Derek Czech, sealed the deal for the Hawks.
On top of that, they had a lot of near misses that could have run the score up a lot higher, and made some really well-executed plays in front of the Midland goal.
“We’re trying to keep the flow in the game,” said head coach Sandy McCarthy. “Keep the puck moving, keep the puck advancing.”
“I think they were trying to do the same, that’s why it was so quick,” he added, pointing to the fact game was over in well under two hours, with few stoppages.
“It could have been 10-2,” McCarthy said of the way his players were working offence. “I think we were playing our systems properly. We weren’t rushing the puck to the net. When you do those things you find gaps. In the first and second I think we were loose defensively, but we were tight in the third period. We’re a project here. We are building game by game. Any time we get a positive we build off that. That’s what we had tonight – a big positive all around.”
The fact that the Hawks managed to skate through two periods without getting a penalty and came out on top at the end of the game should be a big indicator for the squad — you can’t score when you’re in the box.
“This team has lost a lot of games in the past because of stupid penalties,” McCarthy said. “That’s what I’m preaching to them. There’s no sense shooting ourselves in the foot — there a lot of people out there that will do it for us.”
The Hawks will travel to Fergus tomorrow (Friday) to face the Devils with an 8:30 p.m. start.
They return to home ice Sunday to host the Penetang Kings.
The puck drop is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Golden Hawk forwards Justin Lollini and Daniel Cafagna were putting pressure on Midland goalie Marco Colangelo in Sunday’s match.
Photo by Brian Lockhart