The New England Black Wolves did not look like championship contenders in winning only three games in the first half of their 18-game schedule, but don’t count them out because, with Evan Kirk in the nets and a lineup loaded with heart, they've still got a shot at the Champion’s Cup.
Coach Glenn Clark and his crew are preparing for a home game Sunday afternoon against the No. 1 Georgia Swarm after kicking off the second half with a stunning 10-9 overtime road win over the Toronto Rock last Friday.
“That’s certainly the start we needed for the second half of the season,” Clark said. “We need to string some wins together because we’ve dug ourselves a bit of a hole.”
The win was stunning because the Black Wolves trailed four times, thought all was lost when Stephan Leblanc put a ball behind Kirk in overtime, heaved a collective sigh of relief when the goal was disallowed because a video review showed Leblanc had a toe on the crease line, and jumped for joy when defenseman Sheldon Burns got a pass from a falling Kyle Buchanan, fired an underhand shot from the middle of the Rock zone that sent the ball zooming past goalie Nick Rose 2:33 into extra time.
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— NE Black Wolves (@NEBlackWolves) March 5, 2017
It all happened with captain and leading scorer Shawn Evans watching with a grey plastic walking cast on his left foot and with big defenseman Bill O’Brien suspended by the league.
“We got scoring from a lot of different sources,” said attacker Kevin Crowley. “That’s key. There’s no replacing Shawn Evans. He’s one of the best players in the world, if not the best, but the boys did a nice job stepping up.”
“It’s the mentally of next man up,” said defenseman Brett Manney.
Clark wasn’t thinking the light-scoring Burns would end it. Behind the bench before his team’s fourth overtime of 2017 began, “I said ‘Hopefully this doesn’t go very long because I can’t take this anymore.’”
Thirteen of the 19 Black Wolves in the game grew up within a two-hour drive of Air Canada Centre. The Whitby contingent reacted loud and long when their boy Burns emerged the hero.
“He’s such an athletic player,” Clark said. “He can be a difference maker, and he was. To be honest, when he went to shoot I was hoping he’d pass the ball because we had a guy going right to the net. So it was one of those no-yeah kind of things.”
“Coach had really stressed the second half of the season is a fresh start,” Burns said. “The boys really took to that. We refocused to turn things around in the second half. We regrouped and got an aerial view of what we’ll try to accomplish for the rest of the season. This win was awesome. It was a team effort and it just happened to be me who put it in.
“It was a terrific effort by Kyle Buchanan to pick that loose ball up. I was in the right place at the right time. He made an incredible play right to my stick and I took a shot at the net. [Rose] is a bigger guy. I’m not sure he can see his feet very well so I shot low. I backpedalled and shot it low far side.”
Things look much better today at 4-6 than they did at 3-6.
“We were down with 1-2 minutes left but we found a way to tie it up and eventually win it,” Clark said. “It’s nice to be on the right side of that because we let a couple of (overtime games) slip away.”
“All of the teams are packed with talent,” said Kevin Buchanan, who scored a game-high four goals. “Parity in the league is outrageous so every win is vital. To be able to continue in the right direction now is key for us.”
In the first half of the season, he said:
“Things weren’t shaking out very well. Coming into this game at 3-6, we knew it would be a huge momentum shift to jump up to 4-6. We’ve had a lot of close games. We’ve got some really nice pieces, the right pieces. We’ve just to make sure we’re making the small plays and making the bounces go our way. We’ve got to pay attention to those micro things. Every team is so rich in talent that those little things are what truly matter.”
Kirk, the 2016 goalie of the year, has been solid most of the way.
“I can’t say enough about Evan Kirk,” Burns said. “Great guy off the floor and great guy on the floor. He really stood on his head and was an intricate part of this team win.”
“Our record is not on him, that’s for sure,” said Kevin Buchanan. “He was fantastic [Friday]. Any time you hold a team, especially a team with the talent the
Toronto Rock has, under 10 goals that’s an exceptional performance.”
“He makes phenomenal saves in key moments,” said Crowley.
Toronto outshot New England 56-46.
Manney and other defensemen were at their best, too.
“We’d been a bit disappointed in ourselves, to be honest, about the way we’d been playing,” he said. “We cleaned up a few things. We played hard, pushed the ball in transition, and played more as a team together. Increased communication helped.”
“We were in shooting lanes, passing lanes, we had sticks in their hands,” assistant coach Jim Veltman said in the corridor outside the dressing room. “That works. You don’t have to knock people over, into the boards or out of the arena. You just have to play contain defense. Be irritating, really.
“Right now in the room there’s a lot of energy in there. It feels like we could play another game right now. That’s the kind of momentum we need.”
Games get harder to win in the second half, but the Black Wolves are up for the challenge.
“As you go into the playoffs, you want your team to be firing on all cylinders,” said Buchanan. “Obviously, getting wins at any point in the season is vital to getting a playoff berth but we want to make sure on the back half of the season all our pistons are firing and we’re capitalizing.”
“We lost two in overtime so we could easily be on the plus side of .500,” said assistant coach Tracey Kelusky. “We’ve got to get back to who we are - blue collar and earning everything we get."
"To start the second half of the season with a big overtime win . . . hopefully we carry this momentum into the rest of the season,” said Crowley.
“We didn’t have the start we wanted to the season but we’ve come a long way,” said Matt Spanger, who lives in Toronto and needed only 20 minutes to get to Air Canada Centre. “We just have to push through the second half and I think we can do it.”
“This team has everything in the world to make a run at the championship,” said faceoff specialist Jay Thorimbert.
Rochester won a recent championship after being under .500 at the halfway mark, he reminds.
“They put a string of championships together without always having great starts. You’ve got to get hot at the right time and that’s not necessarily at the start of the year. We’ll get more chemistry going and find our way from here.”
“It’s a whole new season now,” said rookie defenseman Joel coyle, who along with Kirk got plenty of cheers from their Orangeville family and friends.
“Lot of family, lot of friends were here,” said Burns. “It was almost a home game away from home. It’s nice to have this kind of support. It’s tough for them to get to Connecticut so it’s nice to see a good turnout here.”