The Whalers
won their third straight game and 11th
out of their last 14 to improve to 35-22-0-2
– the team’s best overall record of the year
with nine games left in the regular season.
Sarnia is now 16-39-3-1.
Besides
Schmitz’s pair (sixth and seventh on the
season), AJ Jenks added his 22nd of
the year to go with two assists, Leo
Jenner scored his seventh of the season
and Tyler Seguin tallied his 43rd
of the year. In addition, Robbie Czarnik
contributed three assists for Plymouth.
Czarnik has 11 goals and 25 assists for 36
points in 34 games since joining the Whalers
in late November.
Whalers
goaltender
Scott
Wedgewood
stopped 38-of-40 Sarnia shots to improve his
record to 5-7-0-0 while raising his save
percentage to .917 over 15 games and
lowering his goals against average to 3.00.
Wedgewood is currently ranked 13th
by the National Hockey League’s Central
Scouting in the mid-term rankings for the
upcoming NHL Entry Draft in June.
Tyler
Peters
(14th) and Brandon Francisco
(10th) scored second period goals
for Sarnia, who fought back from a 2-0
Whalers lead after one period to tie the
game.
The Whalers
started scoring early, jumping to a 1-0 lead
at 0:19 when Jenks snapped a shot from the
high slot over the shoulder of Sarnia
goaltender Shayne Campbell and
underneath the crossbar. Jenner made it
2-0, working with Czarnik on a give-and-go
deep in the Sarnia zone. Jenner carried the
puck into Sarnia territory and passed to
Czarnik on the left wing. Czarnik feathered
a return pass to Jenner in front of the
Sarnia goal, who made no mistake with a
one-timer at 16:53.
But Sarnia came back to tie
the game at 2-2 on power goals by Peters
(shot from the left wing through a screen at
5:15) and Francisco (put-back of a rebound
from the right circle at 9:02).
That set the stage for two by
Schmitz, the first at 12:12 from the right
wing with a shot tucked inside the far post
from a pass by Josh Brittain,
the second at 17:50 on a shot from the right
circle that popped the water bottle under
the cross bar.
“(On the first goal) I went
far side, and to be honest, I was just
trying to hit the net,” Schmitz said. “The
next one (the second goal), I picked the
corner. We practice that play a lot, with
the pass across and then shooting the puck
on net. So I was aiming, but luck was on my
side.”
The Whalers
showed depth in winning, with three skaters
tallying three points and Seguin - the OHL’s
leading scorer – scoring just once, the
final goal of the game on a rebound from the
slot at 16:31 on a power play.
“Even when the big goal
scorers don’t score, we’ve got other guys
that can step up,” Schmitz said. “It really
helped tonight.”
