Thunder feels the Storm

Treneman turns in Season Best Performance

After 2 full weeks off the Kamloops Storm hit the ice Friday night against the Creston Thundercats and for the first 2 periods it wasn't pretty.

After a lacklustre 1st period where both teams showed signs of turkey rust, Brandon Astle of the Thundercats stole a sloppy pass at his own blueline and raced down the ice untouched to deke out a waiting Brennan Jones to score short-handed and take a 1-0 lead.

Shortly after, Kamloops was on another power-play and Justin Giroux let a slapper go from the blueline that beat a solid Wade Waters (Creston goaltender) to tie the score 1-1.

Less than 1 minute later Creston took advantage of their powerplay and Matt Miller was johnny-on-the-spot to rap in a shot close in on Brennan Jones. Sloppy play continued on Kamloops part and with 2:14 left in the 2nd, Graham Telford took advantage of another weak effort at the Creston blueline as he waltzed in untouched on Jones and slipped the puck through his legs to take a solid 3-1 lead going into the 3rd period.

Like many teams that visit the olympic ice at McArthur Island the first time, the 3rd period creeps up on them and they hit the wall. The Storm was clearly the better skating club in the 3rd period and caused Creston to take a series of penalties that proved fatal in the end.

Cody Kightley slapped in his first goal of the season from the blueline on the power play to close the gap to 3-2. Then Lundy Treneman turned on the afterburners.

In a span of 4 minutes and 52 second Treneman scored 3 even strengths goals to pull Kamloops ahead to stay. His first was a rebound from a brilliant effort by Anthony Collins. His second goal, only 2:10 after his first was a nice shot from between the circles on a screened Wade Waters. His 3rd and Kamloops 5th, was again a slick passing play that included Jake Young and Austin Goode. Young probably could have buried it himself but as an unselfish leader he passed it to Treneman for his easiest goal of the night.

Joel Leonard completed the scoring on the power play at 15:49 of the period and Kamloops waltzed away with its 18 win of the season.

3 Stars - Treneman, Leonard and Creston goaltender Wade Waters. Waters was my pick for 1st star going into the 3rd but his team's collapse clouded his brilliant effort between the pipes.

David Osborne and Mike Hanes both had particularly strong games on defence as they laid out a number of crushing hits and were both involved in the offensive part of the game. Osborne ended up with one assist for his efforts.

Tonight the Storm take on Spokane at 7:30 at the Mac Park Sports Centre. See you there.

You can check out the Box Scores here.

Note: again the broadcast was interupted by poor line communication. It's something that we can't do anything about at our end and hopefully the bugs can get ironed out. Thanks to anyone that phoned in to let us know that the broadcast went off air.