CALGARY, AB (December 8, 2018) – Ethan Lund (Calgary, AB) scored his first junior A goal, and notched a career high four points, as his Brooks Bandits (29-3) broke open a nailbiter of a game in the third period, downing the Calgary Canucks 5-2 on Saturday night at the Max Bell Centre.
Brooks outshot Calgary 53-15 in the game, including a 30-5 margin in the opening two periods, but only held a one-goal lead until three goals, all coming from Lund point shots, helped them pull away in the third.
A 20-1 shot advantage in the first period, in which Brooks didn’t allow a shot on goal for the first 15 minutes, only produced a 2-goal advantage. First, team captain Nathan Plessis (Salmon Arm, B.C.) backhanded in a rebound on a power play net front scramble at the 12:48 mark. Then, at 16:18, William Lemay (Marieville, QC) wired home a top-shelf wrist shot from the top of the right circle to double the Brooks advantage.
In the second, Calgary cut the deficit in half when Dylan Clark went bar down on a shot from the right circle, breaking a streak of nearly 150 minutes of shutout hockey for Brooks goalie Tanner Marshall (Kelowna, B.C.).
But in the third, at the 3:52 mark, Lund fired a wrist shot from the left point that deflected off a Calgary defender’s stick and between the pads of Canuck goalie Brett Balas for the Calgarian’s first Junior A goal, which stood up as the game-winner.
Calgary drew closer at 6:41 when a Brandon Brazeau sharp angle shot deflected by Marshall, but the Bandits responded with two goals in the ensuing 66 seconds.
First, a Lund point shot produced a rebound for Plessis to one-time home from the right circle to make it a 4-2 game. Another point shot produced a left circle rebound that Andranik Armstrong (Alexandria, VA) fired in to notch the 5-2 final score.
The Bandits went 1 for 7 on their power play and 3 for 4 on the penalty kill, as Marshall made 13 saves to push his record with Brooks to 3-0. Brooks will travel back to Calgary on Tuesday night for another road matchup with the Calgary Mustangs at 7:30 PM, before finishing their pre-Christmas schedule with home games against Drumheller and the Canucks on the ensuing Friday and Saturday.