The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The Flin Flon Bombers weren't messing around when they took on the Melfort Mustangs Thursday at the Whitney Forum. Fourteen seconds into the game a brawl broke out to the left of Bombers goalie Travis Crickard, who was bothered by a few Mustangs and had his teammates come to his defense. Brett Needham, Bradey Fidierchuk, Keelan Cook, Evan Smith and Mackenzie Groenewegen spent the majority of the period in the sin bin. "That's as intense a war as I've seen in junior hockey in 21 years," said Bombers coach-GM, Doug Stokes following a 5-4 victory. "You had to battle for absolutely every square inch of ice that you wanted." With just over 1,000 fans cheering on the Bombers, the energy is something that won't be soon forgotten . Fans got more jacked up after Andrew Leslie pummeled Andrew Wasmuth and raised his arms to the crowd and hugged a teammate in the penalty box. The only time the Bombers trailed in the game was early in the first. The turning point came when Bombers defenceman Myles Masse made a poor play resulting in the puck flipping over Crickard to even things at four with five minutes remaining. Even after making that mistake, Stokes put his rookie defenseman back on. "That was a little bit of a soft play in the neutral zone," Stokes stated. "The bottom line is he's played very well for this team all year. When we get down to the crunch time-we go to the four (defencemen)- he's one of the four." Luckily for Masse, teammate David Holinaty answered that goal 30 seconds later when Tyler Beachell fed the trailing defenceman who broke in alone on Mustangs goalie Dustin MacDonald to net the winner. "Unbelievable," Holinaty said. "I mean there's no better feeling in life. It's all great." The key player of the game for the Bombers turned out to be Crickard, who despite allowing a couple tough goals, came up big when needed. "No. I think I struggled a little bit," said Crickard, who was given the workers hard hat by his teammates after making 20 saves. "I struggled a bit closing up my five-hole." Stokes was very impressed with the performance of his team, which he felt they owed it to themselves to play better than how they played in Melfort. "We had no passengers at all," Stokes said. "We wanted to leave everything on the ice and empty the tank and I thought we did that." The tank was running on fumes at times as the Bombers struggled in the last few minutes. Leading the way for the Bombers was Tyler Beachell with three assists along with Dalton Pajak and Dennis Kubat with two assists. Scoring for the Bombers was Richard Dupre, Mike McKinna, Blake Rolston, Bradyn McCullough, and of course, Holinaty. The bad news for the Bombers happened when Wasmuth kneed Braden Olszewski, who was carried off the ice by his teammates and didn't return. As of Friday, Olszewski's injury status was unknown.
