It was over a month ago, on Dec 6, when Clarence and Timon faced off for the first time this season. The game ended with Timon winning 4-3 in the final seconds of overtime, and the physical play resulted in a Clarence player suffering an injury that held him out for the next five games.
On Sunday afternoon, Clarence and Timon met again. The Red Devils hadn’t forgotten about the December game.
“We had the overtime loss for the last game, so it was a bit sour against this team, so we had a lot of energy going in, so it was big,” Ryan Kelly said. “There was definitely a lot of physical momentum coming into this game from the last one too. One of our players actually got injured last game that we played them, so there was a lot going on there.”
“I think because it was close the entire game and they ended up coming out on top, this game was kind of a redemption game for us,” said Dylan Lock. “Everyone was fired up before the game, and we knew what we had to do: we had to play hard to win.”
Sunday’s game ended with a come-from-behind 5-4 win for Clarence amidst 16 combined penalties for the two teams. Clarence scored twice on the power play and once shorthanded; Timon also had two power play goals.
Lock scored the only goal of the first period to give Clarence the first lead of the game.
“That was great,” Lock said. “I thought that turned it around a lot. It gave us some energy to keep going when it looked like things were starting to slow down, and it could have gone either way, and we happened to get the bounce on this one.”
But Timon scored three goals in a span of 2:06 in the second period to take a 3-1 lead. Joe Shanley scored first, followed by Flannan Gould and Tom Radwan. Clarence’s Brett Naylor scored with less than a minute and a half remaining in the second to cut Timon’s lead to 3-2, and the Red Devils went into the period break down by one.
“I think for the most part, we did well in getting some combinations that we wanted against their guys,” Clarence coach Richard Brooks said. “We had Randy Felber’s line going out a lot against their number one line, and we moved the wingers around to try to make something spark, and sometimes you do that and nothing happens or it backfires. Today it worked.”
“We knew we kinda let our goalie down in the second period by letting in three goals in five minutes,” Kelly said. “Not much talking in between the second and third, but we all knew what we had to do, so we just kinda went out and did what we had to do — buried ’em.”
The third period didn’t start out that way, though. The Tigers took a 4-2 lead just 2:27 into the third with an Evan Shanley goal, and Clarence’s Richy Felber went to the box for unsportsmanlike conduct immediately following the goal. But the Red Devils killed the penalty, and Timon’s Sean Goodspeed was called for tripping a few minutes later.
It took almost the entire power play, but with three seconds remaining in the man advantage and 7:47 left in regulation, Randy Felber scored to cut the deficit to just one once more.
With exactly four minutes remaining in the third, it was Kelly who tied the game at four.
“I just kinda started skating down, and Dylan gave a great cross-ice pass to me, so it was just really nice to tie the game up, give us a lot of momentum to get the fifth one,” Kelly said.
The fifth one came from Lock just 1:38 later, with only a minute and 22 seconds left to play. Lock’s second of the game gave his team the lead, and this time the Red Devils didn’t give it back.
“I was hoping that that was gonna end the game, and it did, so it went the way that we wanted to,” Lock said.
The win tied Clarence with Kenmore East for second place in Division 2, just one point behind Timon.
“It was definitely good for our team,” Kelly said. “We’re really close to the top in our divisional standings, so as long as we keep getting as many points as we can, we should keep moving up.”
The Red Devils have another divisional game Monday night against Frontier, and they’re looking for another win to move closer to first place. After a loss Friday to Orchard Park, Sunday’s win gave Clarence the momentum it needed going into Monday.
“We got another divisional game tomorrow, and coming off the loss with Orchard Park, we really needed to see a W to springboard us into Frontier,” Brooks said. “A game with Frontier tomorrow puts us in a good position if we win to challenge for that top spot.”