Wolves Fall to the Venom in Shootout

by Jeff Barrett

Watertown, NY -For the final time this season, the Wolves and HC Venom squared off in the Watertown Municipal Arena on this Friday evening. The Wolves have taken 6 of 7 games this season from the venom. The Venom's lone win against the Wolves came on the Watertown ice.

The Venom would strike first on this evening when Stavros Soilis intercepted a crossing pass and had a breakaway on Wolves starter Eloli Bouchard and stuffed the puck between the pipe and Bouchard's skate to make it 1-0 at 7:04.

At the 9:07 mark, the Venoms Kaleb Kinsky added to the lead, sliding a shot through the five hole, assisted by Greth Steinway and Ivan Ponivanov, extending the lead to 2-0.

Although Watertown outshot the Venom 14-10 in the first, the Venom held the 2-0 lead at the break.

Trevor Lord got the Wolves on the board just :40 into the second when he dumped the puck into the offensive end and it took an odd bounce over the blocker of Venom starter Rahul Sharma making it 2-1. Trevor Grasby had the assist on the goal as he added to his league leading total, now at 66 for the season.

At 6:59 Trevor Neumann was able to get a stick blade on a Quinn Chevers shot and deflect the puck to the top of the cage, knotting the game at 2 each, with assists going to Chevers and Carter Thornton.

Steven Klinck gave the Wolves their first lead of the night at the 17:10 mark, roofing a shot over Sharma, assisted by Matthew Gordon pushing the score to 3-2.

The Venom outshot Watertown 11-10 in the second, with Watertown holding the lead at intermission.

The Venom tied the game once again at 4:57 of the third with a blast from the blue line from Mark Pozsar, unassisted to make it 3-3.

 Neither team would score again and the game would head to overtime. The extra 5 minutes wasn't enough to find a winner, so it was on to a shootout.

In the shootout, the Venom would get goals from Ricards Jelenskis and Connor Craig, to lift the Venom to a 4-3 win over the Wolves.

The Wolves will close out their regular season schedule on Saturday at Danbury against the Hat Tricks. The Venom will head down Rt 81 in New York to battle the Binghamton Black Bears in their final game of the season.

For the Wolves, it will be a quick turn around as they will host the Motor City Rockers in a wild card game on Tuesday evening at 7:30