The Niverville Nighthawks' winning streak has come to an end. The team finished their long weekend road trip of western and northern Manitoba with a 4-3 loss to the Dauphin Kings on Sunday night. With the loss, the Nighthawks stay in fourth place in the MJHL’s East Division with a record of 29-14-3.
The Nighthawks were playing their third game in three nights and had to be feeling it, as they were slow and were outshot 52-30 over the course of the 60 minutes.
Sean Williams opened the scoring for Niverville midway through the first period.
Dauphin replied with a pair of goals early in the second period before Jase Konecsni got one back for the Nighthawks to knot the game at 2-2.
The Kings scored twice in the dying minutes of the second period to jump out in front.
Henry Smith scored his first goal in a Nighthawks’ uniform with three minutes remaining in the third period, but it was not enough to turn the tide.
Niverville’s Austin Dubinsky stopped 48 shots in goal for the loss.
“It was tough for us to play three games in three days,” says Nighthawks head coach Dwight Hirst. “The 4:00 p.m. start today was a matter of us getting back into a game just 18 hours later. We train and push our cardio for these times, but mentally we were not sharp on a few occasions against Dauphin today. We got to learn from those moments and get back to work at practice on Tuesday.”
The Nighthawks are back in action with another road game on February 20 against the Winkler Flyers. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m.
“The road trip was a success in that we got two of three wins and had an opportunity for all three, but just fell short,” says Hirst. “It wasn’t a lack of quit in our group. We've just got to work on the mental toughness of getting through those moments of tiredness and focus even more.”
