Blake reaches a milestone, and Warriors get three out of four points in the weekend

Warriors' defenceman Matthew Blake recently played his 100th career game in the Greater Ontario Hockey League. Veteran of three years with St. Thomas and Stratford, Blake says he is glad to be part of the league.

"It's an honour. Between my time in St. Thomas and here, I've been very grateful to my teammates and coaching staff for letting that happen. Overall, it's an honour in this, in a good league like this," Blake said.

In preparation for the big week ahead, head coach Dave Williams says the team has practiced well and looks forward to the challenge of playing two of the top teams in the Western Conference. 

"I thought we had a good skate here tonight. You know, our guys practiced really hard, so I thought our compete-level practice was really good. We got a tough weekend with London at home and heading to Waterloo, kind of two different things," Williams said.

"London's obviously been really good here to start. Waterloo are off to a good start, but then it kind of poses a different thing. Going to the Olympic-sized ice (Waterloo) is always a bit of a challenge for teams going from smaller ice to big ice. I think it's a really good opportunity and challenge for our guys here against two good teams this weekend."

Stratford hosted the London Nationals at the William Allman Memorial Arena on Oct. 24 as part of Stratford Aces Night. During pregame warmups, the Warriors wore purple warmup uniforms in honour of the Knox Presbyterian Church Cancer Centre Mission. The uniforms are to be auctioned off at the next home game against Chatham on Nov. 7.

After a scoreless first period, Dominic Marshall scored his fourth goal of the season from Coen Galbraith at 4:13 to give the Warriors a 1-0 lead. London would tie the game on the power play with 1:45 remaining in the period.

The Warriors retook the lead 93 seconds into the third period on the fifth goal of the season by Lucas Minard from Will Coward and Rhyse Brown. The score remained 2-1, but the Warriors fell into penalty trouble late in the period, and the visitors capitalized with their second powerplay goal, this time with 2:57 remaining.

Just as the game was destined for overtime, the Nationals conceded a penalty, and the Warriors took advantage. On the powerplay with 68 seconds remaining in regulation, Max Wildfong set the Allman Arena crowd into a frenzy with his fifth goal of the season from Quinn Kipfer and Colin Slattery to give the Warriors a 3-2 lead.

With the extra attacker, London pressed heavily on the Warriors' defence, but the powerplay empty net goal by Kipfer, his third of the season from Slattery, sealed the win for Stratford.

Minard spoke to the Times post-game and explained the team's mindset in the wild final minutes.

"I think our exact words were, let's go end it. So that's kind of the only thing we had in mind there, was that we had a chance to win the game and put out there to win it," Minard said. "We just tried to do whatever we could to do, and it happened."  

Wildfong agreed with his teammate's sentiments, especially with the closing seconds as London pressed for an equalizer.

"We just had to bear down those last couple of minutes. We found a way to shut the game down," Wildfong said.

Williams said the team played well enough to win but knew the result could've gone the other way, given the uncharacteristic miscues. 

"I thought it was a little scrambly. I thought the game was at an okay pace, a little scrambly. I thought we had some moments. I think we've been pretty good defensively so far this year, but I thought tonight we did have some moments where we had prolonged time in our own zone," Williams said.

"Against good quality teams like London that have really good skill, we're going to have to focus on stalling some pucks a little faster and shutting down offensive opportunities five on five in the defensive zone."

The Warriors travelled to the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Centre for the weekend matinee matchup against the Siskins on Oct. 26.

In the first period, the Warriors struck first with a powerplay goal from Rhyse Brown, his first of the season, from Dax Vader and Will Coward at 6:16. Stratford extended their lead to 2-0 early in the second period with their second powerplay goal of the night, this time on the sixth goal of the season by Minard from Slattery and Kipfer.

But for the second straight game on the road, the Warriors were unable to hold a multi-goal lead. Waterloo started their comeback in the mid-way mark of the second period and tied the game with 8:44 remaining in the third period to force overtime.

For the third straight road game, the Warriors ended up in a shootout. After five rounds of shootout hockey, the opposition got the better of the goaltending duel for the second straight time, this time pulling out a win over the Warriors.

In his third career start in the GOHL, Gage Hurst had another solid performance between the pipes for Stratford as he stopped 32 of 34 Waterloo shots. In his three starts with the Warriors, the Royal Oak, Mich. native has posted a 2-0-0-1 record with a 0.96 goals-against average and a .965 save percentage.

"I thought I played all right – a lot of stuff to improve on. I think overall, it was an alright game," Hurst said. "The boys played great in front of me; unfortunately, what happened in the shootout. But, yeah, I think overall, it wasn't a bad game at all.”

Williams credited the team for picking up another three or four points over the weekend but would like to score more when the team is at full strength in a five-on-five situation, as they scored twice in the two weekend games.

"We got three out of four points on the weekend. I think you'll always take a little comfort. If you have weekends where you get three out of four, it's usually going okay for you," Williams said.

"We don't score an even-strength goal. So, when your power play gets you two, you should be able to find at least one on the five-on-five. … You're just rolling the dice a little in the shootout. Any team can win. I would have liked to see us hit the net with a five-on-five."

The special teams had mixed results over the weekend. Stratford's powerplay was effective, scoring four goals on 10 attempts (40 per cent), but the penalty kill was ineffective, with a 71.1 per cent success rate.

The Warriors have picked up a point in six straight contests with a record of 4-0-2 in the streak.