The Niverville Nighthawks continued their losing ways as of late on Monday afternoon with an 8–2 road loss to the Portage Terriers. With the loss, the Nighthawks stay in fourth place in the MJHL’s East Division with a record of 23–21–4.
Once again, there wasn’t much positive to say about today’s game for Niverville as they allowed the Terriers to open the game with a trio of goals before eight minutes had elapsed. It was 4–0 for the Terriers before Nathan Brown got one back for the Nighthawks.
Portage added two goals in the second period and two more in the third period, while Kaycee Coyle got Niverville’s other goal in a disheartening 8–2 loss.
Raiden LeGall stopped 38 shots in the Nighthawks’ goal.
The Nighthawks have made a habit lately of not starting to play hockey from the opening puck drop and falling behind on the score board early.
“We’re not prepared mentally, and waiting to see what the pace will be when the game starts as opposed to dictating the pace ourselves,” said head coach Dwight Hirst. “We’re a team in search of its identity, and we need to find what was successful prior to Christmas.”
The Nighthawks are back in action with a road game on February 24 against the Dauphin Kings. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m.
Coach Hirst notes that there’s a lot that the Nighthawks will be working on in practice this week to ready themselves for Dauphin.
“We’re going to be working on defensive zone structure, building structure from the inside out, and we need to really focus and communicate in our defensive zone,” said Hirst. “We also want to focus on our neutral zone and transitioning back up the ice. If we can clean up our neutral zone and defensive zone, then we can start getting pucks up the ice sooner than later.”
