Saturday, January 22nd, 2022 Nelson 4 Rockets 0
The Saturday night crowd at the Plywood Palace were looking for a high-energy, action-packed contest between the hometown Rockets and the visiting Nelson Leafs and, for the most part, that was delivered.
The Rockets were fairly solid in the opening twenty minutes, skating stride-for-stride with the Neil Murdoch Division leading Leafs. The visitors had a slight edge in the territorial play, firing 18 shots at Levi Hall in the Golden goal, all of which the talented netminder turned aside, as the first period ended in a scoreless draw.
A key Rocket penalty-kill at the start of the middle stanza kept things at even keel in the early going. However, the visitors managed to hit for the opening goal of the game at 4:24 when Simon Nemethy’s shot from the left side hit the top corner.
That goal seemed to spark the Rockets into finding the equalizer, as they had Nelson hemmed in their own end of the ice for about five minutes, but couldn’t find the back of the net. Derek Teare worked himself into a breakaway chance at 9:56, looking to tie things up, but was stopped on a great save by Tenzin Mint in the Leaf cage. At 11:46 Nelson increased their lead to 2-0 with Johnny Carmichael pulling the trigger on a 2-on-1 rush.
In the final period, the margin went to 3-0 as Simon Nemethy drew the puck back to Tyler Pisiak from the face-off, and the quick screen shot went through a maze of players into the net. Nelson completed their victory with a Liam Noble marker with under two minutes left in regulation.
Final score was 4-0 for the southern club. Nelson outshot Golden 45-31.
