Most people associate cranberry sauce and watching football at home with Thanksgiving. But for us hockey wing-nuts who either have a bumper sticker that says "Hockey is where we live, life is where we go in-between games" or have seen said bumper sticker and admitted, "yeah-that's us"........we all found ourselves up early on Thanksgiving morning watching a hockey game at Lakeshore instead. It was the Thunder's final pre-season scrimmage and they were home in white hosting the Hilton Cadets. There were several surprise shifts skated by sweaters seven, eight, and ten. "Who's that?" everyone was asking in the stands. Well it was senior manager Tyler Lepore (7), junior manager Dylan Soeffing (8), and junior manager Nick Delucia (10) making their varsity debut and they put a considerable amount of pressure on the Cadets, keeping it deep in their zone and getting pucks to the net, including a QSC by Lepore. Meanwhile, at the other end of the rink, A-Sim was throwing the leather and putting up a wall to keep Hilton at bay. Snake inherited the family business, logging a harry to help the cause along the way. Then with 7 mins to go in the half, Mike Briganti fed Eric Hostetter who would take it to the hole, but the puck ended up waiting patiently in the paint for senior Assistant Captain Mike Miller to come along and bang it home. Sophomore forward Tyler Mattle was next to light the lamp, walking out in stealth mode from below the goal line and sliding it by the Hilton keeper far side on the ice, while his linemates, senior forward Matt Lerch and Junior forward Andrew Sherry, were supporting the play with great pressure down low. Nice work boys! There was a "Yeah Thun-Derrr" uttered before the break, but it was lacking the usual bravado that only JR can deliver. Vyper logged a few harry's in the second half, while Thunder killed off a penalty or three. Ian Cumming came up big between the pipes as well, playing with a great deal of confidence. Witnessed a lot of icings, prompting commentary by Dan Miller that "Hilton was in mid-season form", but with less than 5 mins on the clock, Hilton came down the ice 2 on 1 and Joey Palumbo went upstairs to break the SO. As the final horn sounded, all the dads flew out of the rink exclaiming they had to get home and start cooking the turkey... yeah right, said the moms!
See you all for Thunder's home opener against the Pittsford Panthers, Tuesday 1-Dec, 7:30pm at Lakeshore. Rumor has it something might be getting raised to the rafters. You wouldn't want to miss that now would you?
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