Too Little Too Late: Springfield Thunderbirds Fall Despite Late Rally

SPRINGFIELD – Going into the third period, the Springfield Thunderbirds trailed the Hartford Wolfpack 4-2 and was on the opposite side of the momentum train.

Instead they stormed back and made it a one goal game within fiirst five minutes of the final frame on a shot from the left point by Logan Brown.

However, it was too little too late, as the Thunderbirds (8-2-2-0) wound up falling to the Wolfpack (8-3-1-0) by a final of 6-4 after two late goals from Hartford and one from Springfield would fell them on Friday night .

“It’s a good hockey team over there,” Assistant coach Stuart Tkaczuk said. “You can’t take anything for granted and we had some chances, but when you look at some of the detail oriented areas of the game they weren’t at the level this team has been accustomed to playing at this season.”

Among those detail oriented areas was the power play, which is where Springfield really struggled. It wound up going 0-for-6 on the power play, something that Tzaczuk alluded to as a key to their struggles.

He went on to mention that Colten Ellis played much better than his statistics showed. While Ellis did allow 5 goals in net, he stopped 27 shots, a season high for him.

As for why they didn’t ride the hot hand and play Charlie Lindgren in consecutive games, Tzaczuk said simply “we have to use all of our goalies” and implied they were saving for Lindgren for the tougher road game against Lehigh Valley coming up.

In the first period, Springfield got started early – jumping on a Hartford miscue off the opening draw and sneaking one past Wolfpack goaltender Keith Kincaid – making it 1-0 just 22 seconds into the first period.

“I’ve seen [teams score] in under 5 seconds and it’s a weird thing that happens,” Tkaczuk said. “You think because it came from a hardworking goal, you think okay it’s going to be one of these games… You think it’s going to be an easy night… There’s good teams everywhere in this division and you have to play a full 60 minutes to earn your wins and we didn’t do that.”

While the Wolfpack wound up scoring four in the period, the second came on the power play and it couldn’t have been more special. It came off a neetfront scrum that was tapped past Ellis by rookie Zac Jones.

The tally was his first since turning pro earlier in 2021, following a one-year, NCAA National Championship, run with the University of Massachusetts just up the road in Amherst.

The Thunderbirds now head on the road to take on the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in Allentown, PA on Saturday. Puck drop is at 7:05 p.m.