In their first road test of league play, the Spirit would travel to St. Louis for 3 games, or so they thought. Winter Weather would play a heavy part, cancelling 2 out of 3 games. Good news from the weekend is the Spirit took down the undefeated Kirkwood #2 Stars in a great battle on Saturday morning.

In what would turn out to be the only game of the weekend, Kirkwood #2 and Springfield would face off.  Midway through the first Brooks Kettering and Gage Robb combined to setup Wyatt Wirth who would shoot the puck as he was falling down. The puck would go over the goalie’s shoulder and into the net for a 1-0 lead. That would be it for the first period as Kirkwood took three penalties but the Spirit could not convert. In the second period both teams would get into penalty trouble and it almost cost the Spirit the lead. Cooper Pumphrey shut the door and Will Peters showed some excellent penalty killing to keep Kirkwood off the board in the second period. In the third the Spirit got into penalty trouble again, taking 4 in the period. One would cost them as Kirkwood would tie it up at 1 late in the game. Pumphrey made 2 stops before the Spirit let another Kirkwood player slip behind them to bang in the third shot. The game would look as if it would end in a tie, then Zahn Werner took over. Werner would take the puck end to end as we have seen all year and rip a shot over the shoulder of the Kirkwood netminder to put the Spirit ahead 2-1 with just over 2 minutes left in the game. The goal would hold up and the Spirit would sneak out of this one with a win. The new and improved player of the game belt went to Will Peters who showed he can be very reliable in all situations especially the penalty kill.

With the win the Spirit stay in 1st place in their division and the league with a 7-1 record. They are 17-2-2 overall on the year and on a 4 game winning streak.

Games with Kirkwood #2 and St. Peters will look to be rescheduled in January.

The Spirit are now off for the holidays and return to action January 13-15 for their second tournament of the year in St. Louis.