The Ice Dogs against the Chippewa Steel would bring home the season series, and after Friday’s overwhelming offensive performance, we would see a gritty defensive showing from the dogs, but the steel would get the first goal.
Just under five minutes into the game, and the Steel scored off a shot from the point that made it through three players for the first goal of the game.
The rest of the period would have a lot of possession play with a lot of back and forth action. Almost three minutes into the second, the Ice Dogs scored, as Arseni Vorobev grabbed his first goal as an Ice Dog in his second game with the team, tying the game up at one.
The rest of the second period was another gritty showing much like the first, but the Ice Dogs would score 21 seconds into the third, with Kyle Rohrer breaking the tie.
A minute later, Nik Gudmundson received a breakaway pass from George Peterson, and he tagged the back post for the two goal lead and his sixth on the season.
The Steel grabbed their second goal of the game three minutes after, but the Dogs shut down the comeback effort, bringing out the brooms for the sweep and the solid defensive win.
Coach Ryan Theros was impressed with the win because of the mental toughness the team showed by continuing to stay on the pedal throughout the whole game. He added, “it’s not going to be handed to us and it’s not going to be from here on out. So we have to continue to get better each game.”
Arseni Vorobev, one of trade deadline pickups, thought “it was amazing,” scoring his first goal as an Ice Dog. The Moscow product had a lot of emotions and couldn’t explain exactly how he felt about it.
The next series for the Ice Dogs is at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex against the Kenai River Brown Bears February 23-24.
