Hockey: Chargers quiet Thunder with 7-3 win

by Jason Wolverton

Midland Dow hockey coach Dick Blasy said he’s been waiting all season for his team to start burying the puck in the net.

Wednesday night at Midland Civic Arena, Blasy’s wait came to a definitive end.

Eli Rytlewski scored three goals for the Chargers and Jordan Fairbank tallied five assists on the night to help Dow improve to 4-3-1 on the season with a 7-3 victory over the visiting Bay Area Thunder.

“Going into this game, we were not burying the puck at all and we’ve really been working on that in practice,” Blasy said. “It was nice to see them come out tonight and not just score, but bury the puck. Tonight we had ugly goals and beautiful goals.”

Dow got things started on the right foot as Fairbank assisted on two first period goals by Michael Allen that gave the Chargers an early lead. But a roughing penalty at the end of the opening period gave Bay Area a power play to begin the second and they wasted no time in capitalizing with a goal from Aaron Preston just 30 seconds in. Ausin Horner scored for the Thunder two minutes later and suddenly Dow’s lead had vanished.

“You take a penalty and they capitalize on that penalty and now you’ve got a team believing that they’ve got a chance to win,” Blasy said of the Thunder’s second period resurgence. “But I think we did a nice job of taking that thought out of their mind pretty soon after they scored those two goals.”

“Pretty soon” happened to be about forty seconds later when Fairbank carried the puck into the zone and sent a pretty centering pass towards Rytlewski , who buried it home to give Dow the 3-2 lead.

Fairbank picked up his fourth assist of the evening with 7:43 to go in the second when he passed to Rytlewski who managed to get the puck back to a wide open Zach Stidham who blasted a slapshot past Thunder goalie Kyle Srebinski.

Stidham scored again two minutes later when Fairbank pulled off another beautiful setup on a centering pass that increased Dow’s lead to 5-3.

“With Jordan, we knew he had it in him,” Blasy said. “Sometimes you just need that breakout game and I think tonight was his breakout game. Those were some of the nicer setups I’ve seen in a long time.”

The Chargers scored their fourth goal of the second period on a power play with 1:48 to go when Brent Koaches’ shot rebounded off Srebinski and onto Rytlewski’s stick as he slammed it home for his second goal of the game.

Rytlewski completed the hat trick with a goal early in the third and Alex Murray later added a score for Bay Area to round out the scoring.

Allen and Stidham finished the night with two goals and an assist apiece, while Chad Archer had two assists. Michael Oakley also added an assist for Dow. Rytlewski had two helpers to go along with his three goals.

“Eli has just been a workhorse for us,” Blasy said. “We knew he’d be a very good player for us, but he’s now really starting to get rolling.”

Ben Nowak stopped 16 of 19 shots to pick up the win in net for the Chargers.

“All in all I’d say we played pretty well,” Blasy said. “We moved the puck better than we have in a while, but we still have a ways to go.”

The Chargers will be in action again Friday when they travel to Petoskey. Game time is scheduled for 7 p.m.

For more photos from Wednesday’s game click on “Photo Slideshow” in the top right corner of this article.

Photos by Doug Julian & Jason Wolverton