Action packed 15-goal game, Brave take the win

In a game that almost didn’t go ahead due to the traveling CBR Brave’s missing equipment, spectators witnessed a 15-goal game with action right down to the final buzzer. In the end, it was a dominant Brave that took the 10-5 win against the Adelaide Adrenaline at the Adelaide IceArena.

A six-goal haul from the Brave’s Stephen Blunden in his first game back from injury helped put Adrenaline to the sword, in a crucial win for the visitors. With his sixth goal, Blunden reached his 100th AIHL goal in just 71 games, becoming the 14th player to do so.

The Brave's Stephen Blunden (#73) right of screen, puts one of six shots in the net, taking his AIHL tally to 100 goals. Photo: Frank Kutsche.

Adelaide Adrenaline Head Coach Sami Mantere lamented the defensive breakdown after some strong performances by his team.

“I thought defensively we were really poor, the attention to detail was just not there,” said Mantere.

“We have played well defensively the last four games and today we just started to slip, so we have to go back to how we played well against Melbourne on the road last week.”

Blunden opened the scoring for the Brave just over two minutes into the game with a scrappy goal after Adrenaline’s Matt Murphy made the initial save. Blunden struck again soon after, on an almost identical play to score in close range and put the visitors up 2-0 with nine minutes left in the first period.

The Adrenaline rallied and their hard work was rewarded: Cam Critchlow put a great shot on nets, bunted away by Alex Tetreault, but latched onto the rebound and made no mistake the second time around, to reduce the deficit to 2-1.

Adrenaline's Cam Critchlow keeps his eye on the puck, scoring early in the first period to keep the game close. Photo: Frank Kutsche.

It didn’t take long for the Brave to respond: Stephen Blunden jumped onto a defensive miscue, stormed in on Murphy, and launched a rocket wrist shot over the blocker for the short-handed marker and gave the visitors a 3-1 lead.

The Brave struck again before the end of the period with Geordie Wudrick finishing up some beautiful passing from Matt Harvey to take a 4-1 lead into intermission.

The second period was a much tighter affair: the Adrenaline working plenty to climb out of the hole. The Adrenaline scored first with Greg Oddy shooting high on the glove side to beat Tetreault and reduce the lead to two points.

However the Brave continued to pile on the Adrenaline, with goals to Wehebe Darge in his first game back in the Ice ArenA since departing the Adrenaline to join the Brave, and another to Stephen Blunden to take the Brave to 6-2, and chase Murphy from nets.

CBR Brave head coach Rob Starke was pleased with the efforts of the Brave, saying “I think we regained our scoring touch, but equally as important, we played well in our defensive zone. 

“It’s one step in the right direction. I think (we’re) coming out of a bit of a slide, it’s a win that we desperately needed, Starke continued

“We hope to duplicate the effort tomorrow and if we can play like that again, I think we will get a very similar result.”

There was plenty of action in the third period, which saw a total of seven goals in the final stanza. The first half was all Brave as goals came thick and fast: Stephen Blunden added two more to his haul – bringing his total to six goals for the night  – Geordie Wudrick and Dominic Jalbert added to the tally, finishing 10-2 for the Brave.

The Brave celebrate Dominic Jalbert's goal, taking the visitor's to a 10-2 lead. Photo: Katrina Chenoweth.

From that point, the Adrenaline were playing for pride, and this is a club that has tremendous spirit.  Adrenaline’s riposte first came from Cole MacMillan with a wicked snipe over Tetreault’s glove to go 10-3 with less than nine minutes in the game. Then, with just over four minutes left, it looked as though the Adrenaline were picking up wind, as Joey Rezek joined the scoresheet to reduce the lead 10-4.

With less than nine minutes left in the game, Cole MacMillan's goal triggers an Adrenaline resurgence in the 3rd period. Photo: Katrina Chenoweth.

The Brave looked to have successfully shut the door on an Adrenaline resurgence, but the Adrenaline’s Darin Corstens scored an incredible buzzer-beater with 0:01 left on the clock to bring final score to 10-5 to the Brave.

The teams will meet again tonight at the Adelaide IceArena at 4:30pm local time.