Seawolves Advance To Final Five

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.  Combined with Friday night's win over the Gophers, tonight the Seawolves have now made that phrase their trademark.  Both wins were created by the selfless defensive play of everyone on the ice.  Chris Kamal was certainly excellent in both of these games but I've not seen a team full of hockey players commit themselves in their own zone in any way shape or form like this years squad has been doing and continued to do this weekend.

When I wrote this post earlier in the week, I already knew that the Seawolves were a very tightly knit group of guys playing for each other.  They've reinforced that this weekend with what is nothing short of a brilliant performance from each and every guy that laced them up.  I can only offer an insubstantial congratulations with words.  These guys deserve so much more than what I can say here.  It was great.

After two periods of scoreless hockey where the Seawolves had again imposed themselves defensively on the Gophers, Mickey Spencer was fed an excellent rink wide pass and rushed into the Gophers zone before ripping a shot over Kent Patterson's glove to stake the Seawolves to a 1-0 lead with just 2:32 gone in the 3rd period.  It was his 1st goal of the season.  Then with 13:24 gone in the final frame,  leading Seawolves scorer Tommy Grant similarly broke in cleanly and made it 2-0.  With that the Seawolves continued their pattern of contributions from all through the lineup to exemplify what has become the identity of this year's team.

Chris Kamal was once again exactly where he needed to be when he needed to be there.  He came up with several really huge saves tonight.  The stop he made on a Mike Hoeffel attempt was nothing short of mind blowing.  I'm at a loss to describe it adequately.  Hoeffel tipped a great feed at the top of the crease and in a millisecond Kamal got his stick/hand/blocker down and stopped a sure goal before the puck traveled more than six inches.  It was spectacular.  He stoned Jay Bariball on a clean breakaway early in the game.  He made a high glove save on another sequence that had goal written all over it.

The game was in doubt pretty much right up to the end but confident, calm and mature play from all the guys secured the win.  I'll stop here because I'm just pretty much overwhelmed with the same thoughts and it's going to get boring for me to keep saying what a great team win this was.  I'm sure I'll have another post later this evening.  Congratulations Seawolves!!!