Admirals Home Struggles Continue With Weekend Losses

By: Cidney Langlois

The Amherstburg Admirals struggles on home ice continued this past weekend in a pair of losses to the Dresden Kings and Wheatley Sharks.

Starting the back-to-back set on Saturday night against Dresden, the Admirals out-shot the Kings by a 20-13 margin over two periods of play, but the Kings scored the only goal coming off the stick of Xandre Aitken at the back half of the opening frame. Out-shooting and out-chancing the Kings through most of the second period, the Admirals ran into a hot goaltender in Ty Golden, who made several enormous saves to keep his team in the front. They would extend their lead to two on Garrett Glover’s tally to take a 2-0 lead into the third.

In the third, the visitors did a good job of keeping the Admirals at bay. Rookie forward Brett Jones scored his first career goal with a minute left in regulation to cut the lead to one, but the Kings quickly put things to bed with an empty-net goal 40 seconds later and the horn sounded on a 3-1 Dresden victory.

The following night, the team was back on the ice for the second match-up of the year with the Wheatley Sharks. Josh Courtney got the start in goal for the second night in a row, but there would be little he could do on this night. Leading 2-0 after 20 minutes of play, the Sharks would add four more in the second to blow the doors open.

In the third, head coach Beau Hunter made the decision to swap Courtney for Joe Costea in hopes to wake their team up for the final 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the period matched the tone of the previous two with the Sharks dominating the period and scoring a final pair of goals at 5:35 and 19:40 to round out the scoring in a lopsided 8-0 win.

Though the weekend didn’t go the way the Admirals were hoping, they’ll be back in action next Sunday on home ice at 7 P.M. to face off against the Mooretown Flags.