ROANOKE, Va. – The Rail Yard Dawgs had multiple chances to notch a goal Friday night but nothing came to fruition in the 2-0 loss to the Ice Bears. With the Game 2 win, Knoxville forces a decisive Game 3 Saturday night.
Knoxville’s Stephen Mundinger stopped all 44 shots he faced in net to help tie this best-of-three series at 1-1, while Austyn Roudebush kept the Dawgs in the game with 16 saves on 18 shots faced for Roanoke.
“When you don’t do things well early and you’re not bought in to make sure that you’re you’re working harder than your opponent, the hockey gods they punish you,” said Rail Yard Dawgs head coach Dan Bremner. “You put up 44 shots, tons and tons of chances, hitting bodies, getting blocks, finding a way to see it or finding a way for it to hit them. I do believe that we’re not working the way we should be early in the game and that’s the result.”
Roanoke went 0-for-7 on the power play, while the Ice Bears went 0-for-3 on their power play chances.
“It’s frustrating and obviously we wish we could have a couple of those plays back but the good news is we had some chances on there,” said Rail Yard Dawgs forward Nick Ford. “We just have to keep building off that.”
“We thought that we played a pretty decent game, obviously not the result that we wanted, but I mean I thought our puck movement was pretty decent at some times, sometimes it wasn’t,” said Rail Yard Dawgs defenseman Matt O’Dea. “You can blame that on a number of things. At the end of the day we just have to execute as a team.”Puck drop is scheduled for 7:05 P.M. EST in the Star City Saturday night.
