Having won only one of six games coming into their contest against the Seguin Bruins on Saturday night, the importance of earning a victory against the team sitting in last place in the West Division went without saying for the St. Michael’s Buzzers. Ahead of the ninth place Upper Canada Patriots by only five points, the Buzzers needed the two points against the Bruins in the worst possible way, especially after having lost to Seguin once already earlier on in the season.

It certainly was not a textbook effort as the Buzzers gave up the game’s first goal to Bruins’ Captain Chris Marinakos less than five minutes into the game and had to hang on to a one goal lead in the dying minutes but at the end of the day, getting out of Seguin with two points was the goal, no matter how the two points were acquired.

“I don’t think we came out and played very well tonight to be honest, it was a subpar performance by any stretch of the imagination,” said Buzzers’ Head Coach Mike DePellegrin. “We didn’t compete as well as we should have for three periods. Although a win is a win, we’ll take it and move on but the performance was not very good tonight.”

Discussing the importance of several games over the past few weeks but being unable to carry out wins, Buzzers’ Assistant Captain Jesse Beamish explained that it was vital that St. Michael’s was finally able to emerge successfully.

“We know we didn’t play a good game but we came out of there with the two points,” said Beamish. “We talked about it before the game, how we can’t be giving up points like this and it’s good that we finally executed and got the two points because we are fighting for a playoff spot right now.”

Bruins’ Head Coach Mike Murrel was satisfied with his team’s work ethic but blamed the loss on an inability to capitalize on the scoring chances they were afforded.

“We worked hard, that was important and we were first on pucks and first on pucks will create turnovers but you only have so many chances in a game to score and there was three or four golden opportunities where we missed the net or we hit the cross bar,” said Murrel. “I thought tonight it was disappointing on the finish, but on the effort, we liked what we saw. We had energy, we stayed out of the box but we need to learn to finish better.”

Trailing 1-0, the Buzzers responded with three consecutive goals in the first period to take a 3-1 lead by the 15:20 mark. Lucas Lessio notched his first goal in his last five games to tie it at 9:04 mark. Just over two minutes later, Dan Ciampini shovelled in a loose puck in front of Bruins’ netminder Aaron Green to give St. Michael’s the lead. Toward the end of the frame, Elliott Burlon beat Green with a shot from top of the right wing circle, giving him three goals in his last four games. At the 15:59 mark though, Steve Quinton brought the Bruins back to within one goal with his sixth of the season, chipping a rebound over the outstretched glove of Buzzers’ netminder Jonathan Leparco.

Leparco, making his first career start for the Buzzers, was solid throughout the game making forty stops on forty four shots faced including several early on in the first period when the Bruins could have built an early lead.

“I think Jon had a couple exhibition games in September but he hadn’t played a Junior A game since,” said DePellegrin. “He really stepped up to the table tonight so we’re very happy with what we saw from him.”

Murrel was equally impressed with the play of the Buzzers’ netminder.

“I thought Leparco played well,” said Murrel. “He was on the white ice, he was challenging our shooters, he had the paddle down, and he did the little things well. He’s a big goaltender so when he was down, we needed to get the puck high. He did a good job for them.”

Midway through the second period, Jesse Beamish scored a key goal; backhanding a rebound past Green from the slot to restore the Buzzers’ two goal lead as Seguin was starting to gain traction.

“I think it gave us a little bit of closure and it grew the lead for us,” said Beamish. “I think we needed to just keep playing hard at that time and make sure that we didn’t get scored on so it just gave us a little insurance. We knew though we couldn’t let up and that we’d just have to keep on going.”

However, at the 10:50 mark, David Harris kept the Bruins close, getting them back to within one goal with his eleventh of the season.

Just over three minutes later, St. Michael’s scored what would turn out to be the game winning goal when Mike Hawkrigg converted a Lucas Lessio pass from in close to grow the lead to a pair of goals.

At the 16:36 mark of the third period, Colin Murray cut the Bruins’ deficit to one goal but that was as close as Seguin would come as the Buzzers hung on for an important 5-4 victory.

DePellegrin lauded the play of Jesse Beamish and Mike Neville, who, he said, still managed to play a defensively responsible game even as the team committed several defensive miscues in their own zone.

“I think a guy like Mike Neville and Jesse Beamish are impressive because even in games like this where we’re not performing very well; they’re still very responsible defensively,” said DePellegrin. “They stick to the system and don’t cheat; I think the rest of the guys, as a group, cheated when they shouldn’t and we just didn’t compete as hard as we should have. We played down to the competition tonight and that’s unacceptable.”