Cottonmouths back line healthy for first trip to Indiana
The Columbus Cottonmouths hit the road to the Hoosier State for the first time in SPHL history on late Wednesday night.
They bussed to Evansville, Ind., preparing for a game against the expansion Evansville Thunderbolts on Friday night. Game time is 8:15 p.m. Eastern at the Ford Center. It’s the only game on the schedule this weekend in a light week of work for the Snakes.
Head coach Jerome Bechard hopes to parlay the team’s success over the past weekend into a victory. Columbus broke a nine-game home losing streak on Saturday with a dramatic 2-1 overtime win over the Peoria Rivermen in a game where the Snakes found themselves shorthanded due to injury.
“This past weekend with Peoria, we got back to basics,” Bechard said. “We’re not putting up huge numbers offensively, but if that’s going to be the case, we need to be sound defensively. We need to be gritty and out-battle our opponent.
“We had two pretty good games (Friday and Saturday). We probably deserved to win both of them, but our goals against is right back where it needs to be. We got the right bounces (Saturday) and held on.”
The Cottonmouths find themselves with a full complement of players for Friday’s game as defensemen Spencer Galbraith, Kyle Johnson, and Petr Senkerik all return from injury. The team will still be without newly-acquired forward Chad Brears, who is on the 14-day injured reserve list after suffering an injury from an unpenalized hit from Peoria’s Adam Stuart in Friday night’s game. The Southern Professional Hockey League reviewed film from the game and suspended Stuart for Saturday’s game as a result.
“I have my whole defensive corps back in the lineup, so I can move (Craig) Simchuk back up front,” Bechard said. “Johnson, Senkerik, and Galbraith should be back. That’s three of our top defensemen back in the lineup. It should help out a little bit.”
One player who will not be rejoining the team in the short term is goaltender Lukas Hafner, who has been loaned to the Alaska Aces in the ECHL. Brandon Jaeger has been carrying the load in Hafner’s absence, with former Cottonmouth goaltenders Andrew Loewen and Ian Vigier performing spot duty as emergency backups. Barney Slayton, who works in the Cottonmouths’ front office and coaches youth hockey in the area, will serve as Jaeger’s backup Friday night in Evansville.
“I don’t anticipate Lukas back before the first of the year,” Bechard said. “I’m right now scouting and making phone calls, trying to find another quality goalie who can help Jags. We only have one game this week and a back-to-back with Macon nextweek. The games are kind of spread out where Jags can handle it, but I’m still looking for a quality goalie to back him up. But Jags enjoys the workload. He’s a workhorse back there, and sometimes the more he plays, the better he gets.”
The Cottonmouths have reached the quarter pole of the 2016-17 SPHL season, having played 14 of the 56 games in the schedule. So far, Bechard is pleased with the effort despite the 5-9 record. He knows there is room for improvement.
“I like the dressing room attitude I have,” Bechard said. “We could easily be 9-5 at this point with any kind of luck or any kind of bounces. We just need to keep that work ethic, drilling the little things, and playing within yourselves.
“We need to play smart and we need to be aware of the timing of the game. If we can harness that energy, it’ll be awesome.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2016 at 3:18 PM with the headline "Cottonmouths back line healthy for first trip to Indiana."