The Halifax Thunderbirds dropped their fourth straight game, losing to the Buffalo Bandits 16-11 on Sunday evening at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, N.S. It was the Thunderbirds’ second straight loss to Buffalo this weekend, losing to them by the same score on Saturday afternoon.
“We need to take all the things that we learned over the past couple of weeks. All the mistakes that we made that cost us, those are all lessons that we need to learn and need to improve on those things,” said the team’s head coach, Mike Accursi.
“We have a really good team, we have a good game plan moving forward and we’re kind of hitting the last stretch before playoffs, so we definitely need to be sharper than we have been over the past couple of weeks. I think the effort was there this weekend and that is something we lacked the weekend before. Now it’s putting some new offensive weapons that we got and putting the effort from this past weekend together, and we should have lots of success down the stretch.”
Buffalo didn’t waste time getting on the board. Buffalo goalie Matt Vinc made a save and threw it to Nick Weiss behind the defence and he went on a breakaway and scored 27 seconds into the game.
Halifax answered 20 seconds later. Shawn Evans found Cody Jamieson alone in the slot for the goal.
However, Buffalo kept coming due to some uncharacteristically bad defence by Halifax. Tehoka Nanticoke ran around Graeme Hossack to get loose in the slot and score. Chase Fraser got wide open coming off the bench shorthanded and scored. Then Jake Withers and Colton Armstrong both defended Chris Cloutier leaving Josh Byrne wide open in the slot to score, making it 4-1 Buffalo.
It was Halifax’s defence that answered while shorthanded. Withers and Brad Gillies went on a two-on-one in transition, and Withers fed Gillies who scored to make the score 4-2 at the end of the first quarter.
Buffalo kept on coming in the second quarter. On the same power play a minute into the quarter, Byrne fed Dhane Smith back door for the goal.
Twenty seconds later, Connor Fields had the ball high in the offensive zone with no one in front and scored. Halifax goalie Warren Hill allowed many shots from the outside in the previous game. Mike Accursi pulled Hill and put in Aaron Bold.
“Buffalo, obviously, the night before did a really good job getting to Warren. I have a lot of confidence in Warren, but I know sometimes you have to change the momentum of the game,” said Accursi. “Sometimes changing goalies allows your team to play a little bit different, a little bit tighter and that might give us a little bit of a push and I think Bold came in and did a really good job.”
Brandon Robinson scored right after for Halifax to make the game 6-3. A few minutes later, Halifax had an excellent opportunity to get themselves back into the game on a 5-on-3 power play. However, they didn’t score and ended it early, taking their own penalty.
With six minutes left in the second quarter, Nonkon Thompson got a five minute major for roughing. Dhane Smith and Chase Fraser scored on the powerplay to make it 8-3 for Buffalo.
Halifax got some life before the quarter ended. Clarke Petterson scored with 3.9 seconds left to make the game 8-4.
Buffalo opened the scoring in the second half. Josh Byrne ran through the middle because of an excellent pick and scored.
Halifax answered a minute later on a Dawson Theede power play goal.
The teams kept trading goals. Shawn Evans, Clarke Petterson and Brad Gillies scored for Halifax while Dhane Smith, Matt Spanger and Chase Fraser scored for Buffalo to make it 13-8 with six minutes left in the third quarter.
Halifax answered with a tic-tac-toe goal. Evans found Keogh at the right side of the net, who quickly passed it to Petterson on the other side to score a hat trick.
Austin Shanks also scored to limit Buffalo’s lead to 13-10 heading into the fourth quarter.
Dawson Theede got Halifax back on the board to make it 13-11. In his first two games as a Thunderbird, Theede has six goals. Shawn Evans, Halifax’s other new weapon, completed his second weekend with the team. He had nine points over two games against Buffalo.
“Shawny, he’s a great passer and really does a nice job finding guys,” said Accursi. “Dawson came in and did exactly what we wanted him to do. He was creating opportunities for Cody (Jamieson) and our other lefties just by being a big body and setting hard picks. He’s getting chances to shoot and firing the ball really well this weekend.”
Halifax went on the power play and Matt Vinc needed his best work to keep the ball out. Theede had a great chance diving over the crease but it was stopped. Keogh nearly scored by shooting low left-side, but Vinc managed to keep the ball out. Vinc stopped 60/71 shots in this game and 114/136 over the weekend.
Buffalo scored a massive goal to stop a potential Halifax comeback. Kyle Buchanan passed the ball to Chris Cloutier in front for the goal. Dhane Smith and Chase Fraser also scored to seal the 16-11 win for Buffalo.
Smith led the Bandits with five goals and seven points, while Petterson led Halifax with three goals and four points. In net for Halifax, Hill stopped 12/18 shots and Bold stopped 14/23 shots.
Special teams were a problem for Halifax all weekend. Buffalo went 7/12 on the power play between both games while Halifax went 1/12.
“We’re still struggling to get our power play going,” said Accursi. “When we got those extra man opportunities over the past two games we weren’t very efficient on that. In a game of runs and in games where at typical times we had opportunities to score on our power play, we didn’t.”
Halifax plays their final home game on Friday against the Rochester Knighthawks before playing their final four games on the road. Buffalo has two games next week once again. They play in Philadelphia against the Wings on Thursday and in Colorado against the Mammoth on Saturday.
