November 24, 2013

The Philadelphia Little Flyers look to break even on their weekend home stand. After losing to the Valley Junior Warriors on Saturday, they’ll look to Alec Derks to grind out a win against the high-scoring Boston Bandits.  The Flyers can’t afford to get into penalty trouble as the Bandits are ranked 3^rd overall with the man advantage, capitalizing on an impressive 22.1% of their chances.   Both teams want two points out of this game, and with the Bandits offensive playing style colliding with the Little Flyers defense oriented approach, it should be an interesting matchup.

The Bandits started the scoring early; less than three minutes in Connor Court scored to put his team up to a 1-0 lead early.  Not too long after it was Colin Woods to the rescue, as he snapped a shot over the glove of opposing netminder Ryan Hubbard to tie the game at 1.  The game stayed that way through the duration of the period, as the teams went into the 2^nd period tied 1-1.

The Little Flyers offense took flight in the second period. The first goal was a product of a beautiful setup by Jude Warner to leave Drew Gannon all alone in front of Hubbard, where he put it home to give the Philadelphia its lead of the game.  Following that goal the Flyers were forced to kill of two consecutive minor penalties, which they did very effectively.  After failing to convert on 4 minutes of time with the man advantage, the Bandits surrendered another goal, but this time to Oleg Potemkin.  The Little Flyers go into their locker room with a 3-1 lead going into the third.

The Third period was a slew of penalties for the Little Flyers as they found themselves responsible for 13 penalty minutes in the third period.  After a period of grinding Jon Stickel cut the Little Flyers Lead to 1, with a well placed wrist shot from the slot.  From that point on, Alec Derks shut the door and sealed the victory. 

Coach Russo After the game: “ I thought came out flat, we didn’t really get our legs under us until [Colin] Woods had a nice goal to tie it up.  We got into some penalty trouble but Derks was solid for us back there.”

The Little Flyers leave this game 10-5-1-1, and the Bandits fall to 10-7-2-1.  These two teams meet in less than a week up in Boston on the 29^th, puck, for that game, drops at 3:00pm EST.