Rookie forward nets first goal in Falcons win
Matthew Stranges got a large monkey off his back Friday.
The 18-year-old forward fired his first junior goal to lead the St. Catharines Falcons past the Thorold Blackhawks 3-1 in a Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League, Golden Horseshoe Conference game at Jack Gatecliff Arena.
The Niagara Falls native started his rookie season scoreless in his first 21 games before deflecting a shot past Thorold goaltender Noah Fortuna in the third period.
“If felt great, it was long overdue,” Stranges said. “I felt I owed the boys something.
“Hopefully, there’s more to come.”
Stranges, who attends Saint Paul Catholic High School and has been accepted into the co-op accounting program at Brock for this fall, admitted the streak was in the back of his head.
“My teammates have always been there to support me and every single time I miss a chance they tell me to shake it off,” he said. “It’s really helpful to me because the coaches are always on me to be that good team guy and go in hard on the forecheck and backcheck and make good defensive plays.”
Stranges was sure to retrieve the prized souvenir puck.
“I’m putting that right on my dresser and I’m going to kiss it before I go to bed every night,” he smiled.
Falcons coach Tyler Bielby was happy to see the hard-working forward get rewarded.
“He’s been searching for that first goal all year and was the last guy on our team to find it,” Bielby said. “I really challenged him to make sure he does the little things right and work hard. If he does those things, he’s going to get the bounces he needs to get that puck in the net.”
Bielby said he called out Stranges after the second period.
“I didn’t think he was going hard enough and he produced a couple of good forechecks and the hockey gods rewarded him with a nice tip going to the dirty areas.”
Following a first period which saw each team score once and a scoreless second period, the Falcons took a 2-1 lead early in the third when former Blackhawk Nicholas Rubino scored.
Stranges then netted an insurance goal with just over seven minutes to play.
The win improved the Falcons record to 24-6-0-1. They trail the Hamilton Kilty B’s by three points for first place. The Kilty B’s, who have played one more game than the Falcons, topped the Welland Junior Canadians 6-3 Friday.
Bielby feels his club still has plenty of room to improve.
“It’s still a process,” he said. “I believe in our group and I’m happy with our boys. We need to bear down around the net. We hit a lot of posts in the first couple of periods and I thought it could have been a 4-1 game after two. I still didn’t think we were good enough and that’s why it wasn’t 4-1, it was 1-1.”
The Blackhawks, coming off a 3-0 win over Welland Monday, once again did their best to think defence first and clog up the neutral zone.
“It goes back to things you work on it practice,” Bielby said, when asked about the tactics employed to beat the trap. “If you just want to play pond hockey against the trap, you’re not going to be very successful. You have to run your routes. I thought the guys did a fairly decent job of that early and then we started to try and do too much and that’s where we get in trouble when we start to play other team’s games rather than just our own game.”
Falcon facts: Mason Howard (back) and Jagger North did not dress for the Falcons. Howard is expected to play Saturday in Caledonia . . . Thorold goalie Tucker Adams took a puck to the head in the first period and did not return . . . The Caledonia Corvairs edged the Niagara Falls Canucks 3-2 in the other game Friday.
STATS PACK
Falcons 3 Blackhawks 1
St. Catharines forward Matthew Stranges with his first junior goal.
St. Catharines Falcons: Kyle Glenney (14); Nicolas Rubino (14); Matthew Stranges (1).
Thorold Blackhawks: Adrian Diodati (5).
Game stats: Shots on goal: By St. Catharines on Tucker Adams/Noah Fortuna (28), by Thorold on Andrew MacLean (25); Power plays: St. Catharines 0-for-2, Thorold 0-for-3; Penalty minutes: St. Catharines 6, Thorold 4.
Attendance: 313
Up next: The Falcons are in Caledonia Saturday. The Blackhawks host Hamilton Saturday.
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