CLEVELAND, Ohio- The hardest losses are the ones that slip away.
That was what happened tonight at The Q figuratively and quite literally, as the Cleveland Monsters fell to the San Jose Barracuda by a final score of 1-0. It was a rather clean game by the Monsters tonight, only succumbing to eight minutes of time inside the sin bin. They also mustered up twenty-eight shots. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
“I just think that we didn’t shoot the puck enough. We had good looks at the net we just chose to pass or make other option plays.” said Monsters Head Coach John Madden, who watched as the Monsters went from twelve shots in the first period to seven in the third frame.
Maybe the most detrimental extra pass came from Alex Broadhurst, who received a pass from Carter Camper on the right faceoff circle and instead of firing away, went to dump it back into the slot to Camper. The pass was intercepted and ultimately led to the Michael Brodzinski game-winning goal through Matiss’ Kivelnieks’ five-hole.
The Monsters did take away some positives from this one. For starters, the backup goaltending of Kivelnieks’ is a welcomed sight to Cleveland, as he provides reliability to the position when starting goaltender Brad Thiessen needs a night off.
“It’s early, but both have played extremely well for us and given us a chance to win hockey games,” said Madden on his netminding situation. “That’s what you’re really looking for, goalies that will be able to go in there and make some big saves when you have to.”
The Monsters drop to 2-2-1 on the season and will call this weekend a success, even with the disappointing end to Sunday evening’s game.
“Overall, three points over the weekend, we’ll take it. Always gotta keep adding points up. I thought we let an opportunity slip tonight. Our power play didn’t get any goals for us, we only had a couple good looks. So we gotta keep working on that.”
The Monsters next play on Friday against the Ontario Reign at 7pm.
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