Melfort Sweeps Home and Home Series!

Your Melfort Mustangs start the season off beautifully with two straight wins in their home and home series vs the La Ronge Ice Wolves. Friday saw our boys head up to La Ronge to open the SJHL regular season, and they did not let the commute get to them. Just short of 8 minutes into the game Jaxon Joseph scored Melfort’s first goal of the season off an assist from Justin Ball. One nothing after the first, but that would see some changes midway through the second when hometown boy Kalem Zary scored with help from Miles Warkentin and newcomer Kayle Tosh. American forward Nicholas Schultze would add another goal after being fed by Eric Sinclair, and the second period would end 3-0. The third period really saw Melfort come to life as they scored four more goals. Joseph got his second of the night from Ryan Morrell, Sinclair added another from Matt Goudy and Carson Albrecht, Zary notched his second of the night from Sinclair and Warkentine and Goudy added the final nail with assists going to Zary and Eric Lavoie. The Mustangs maintained their ruthless pressure on offence, but were aided by a great defensive effort by Evan Plotnik who faced 33 shots for his first shut-out of the season.

The next day your horses played host to the visiting wolves who were thirsty for some payback. The first period saw Melfort continue their play from La Ronge as they opened the scoring at the 9 minute mark. Eric Sinclair from Miles Warkentine and Kalem Zary and the Palace had its first goal of regular season. Later in the first period Zary scored on a power play with help from fellow Melfort product Rylan Freed to set Melfort up by 2. With just over 2 minutes gone in the second period Melfort struck again with Keelan Saworski finishing off a pass from Morrell. The Mustangs would score once more before the period would end, on a unassisted point shot from Ethan Rheaume. Plotnik’s shut out would come to an unfortunate end after playing 108 minutes and 10 seconds of hockey when La Ronge’s Zachary Gladu scored the Ice Wolves first goal of the regular season.  Melfort would answer back 9 minutes later with another goal from Keelan Saworski with help from Joseph, and Sinclair. The final point of the game would come from the opposition as Josh Hayward would close the gap to within 3, but that’s as close as they would come as Melfort won again, 5-2. Plotnik added 29 more saves and finished the weekend with a 0.969 SV%.

Your Melfort Mustangs will be back in action again this weekend as they head out on a road trip to play Weyburn on Friday night and Notre Dame on Saturday.