In the last home games and last league games of the regular season, the Spirit welcomed Twin Bridges and Northwest Arkansas to town this past weekend. The 2 teams gave the first place Spirit all they could but came up short as the Spirit took both games at home to round out league play.

In game 1 Twin Bridges and Springfield would face off for their second league game, third overall game of the year. The game was scoreless from much of the first period, but with under a minute left Wyatt Wirth found the back of the net, beating the Lightning goalie through the pads for a 1-0 lead. Twin Bridges would push back in the 2nd but were not able to score off some good chances and some sloppy play by Springfield in their own zone. Much of the third period was like the second with some sloppy play from both teams and the Lightning carrying the play. With just under 2 minutes left Twin Bridges pulled the goalie and had a 6 on 4 due to a Spirit penalty. At the 1:39 mark Zahn Werner put the game almost out of reach with and empty net goal from inside the Spirit’s own blue line. Under a minute later Werner found Brooks Kettering in the slot and he ripped one past the Lightning netminder for a 3-0 lead. The scored would hold up and Cooper Pumphrey picked up his ninth shutout of the year.

In game 2 the Spirit would play the Northwest Arkansas Ice Hogs. Again, sloppy play by the Spirit allowed the Ice Hogs to carry most of the play in the first period, which ended in no score. Midway through the second off a turnover, NW Arkansas would score for a 1-0 lead. More turnovers and miscommunication put the Spirit on their heels and they were lucky to escape the second period only down a goal. Less than three minutes into the third Gavin Loven would score to tie the game at one, but 2 minutes later the Ice Hogs would score again off a Spirit turnover to regain a one goal lead. Just over three minutes later on the power-play, Brooks Kettering found Loven who passed the puck to Zahn Werner at the blue line and he put a seeing eye shot on goal that the goalie never saw coming. Will Peters was in front of the goalie and the puck went in and out quickly for a 2-2- tie. Less than 2 minutes later Werner found Kurt Buckman who streaked up the side drawing the defender towards him, then moved the puck over to Loven who made no mistake and put the Spirit up 3-2 with 4:26 remaining in the game. With 1:13 remaining the Spirit added some insurance as Wyatt Wirth found Gavin Loven for the hat trick. It was Loven’s 50th goal of the season, a tremendous accomplishment. Springfield would take the game 4-2 in a very hard fought match as NW Arkansas was up to the task but it was not enough.

With the win the Spirit clinched first place in the league, closing with a 13-1-1 record.

Springfield is back in action February 18-20 in the Top Shelf Hockey Challenge tournament in Dallas, TX, a great opportunity to play against some different opponents.

2016-2017 overall leaders:

Goals: Loven-50, Wirth-23, Werner-18
Assists: Loven-15, Bussen-14, Wirth/Werner-12
Points: Loven- 65, Wirth-35, Werner-30
Plus/Minus: Loven- +57, Bussen- +46, Wirth- +44
Goals per game: 4.0
Goals against per game: 1.4