Tonight’s Game Notes:
Welcome fans to tonight’s MJHL action featuring the visiting Neepawa Natives (11-28-2) and your home townVirden Oil Capitals (21-14-6).Tonight’s game is brought to you byThe Arlington Hotel in Maryfield. (Click to visit the Arlington Hotel Facebook page).
The January 10th trade deadline is officially upon us. As of 8:00 pm tonight, all inter-league trades must be completed while teams in the MJHL may make trades within the league until midnight tonight.
While that’s going on, we have a game to play. Neepawa is in town tonight for the sixth and final meeting of the season between the two clubs. Head-to-head the Oil Caps have run the table on the Natives so far going 5-0 and outscoring Neepawa by a combined score of 29-9. The most recent meeting came on December 13th when Cam Pateman picked up his first career shutout in a 4-0 win. He will get the opportunity to repeat that performance tonight as he will get the start in goal.
If you missed it last night, the Oil Caps put forth an impressive performance from the goal crease out. Sean Kuehn made 38 saves in net while Jordan Greig (2), Corey Haverstick, Dylan Thiessen, and Devan Schram each scored to provide the offense. Meanwhile, newly acquired defenseman, Owen Solecki, made his Oil Caps debut on home ice.
With last night’s win in the books, the Oil Caps have another opportunity tonight to put some heat on the top third of the league. Winkler and Winnipeg are idle tonight while Steinbach plays host to the OCN Blizzard.
For Virden to pick up the win tonight, they’re going to have to keep a close eye on Natives forward, Drake Lindsay. Lindsay has 46 points (17 G, 29 A) on the season, which is 21 points more than the next highest player, Shawn Pachet. The Oil Caps are also going to have to make things tough on Neepawa goaltender, Alex Henry. He’s been known to single-handidly steal a game for the Natives who are willing to get points anyway they can get them right now to get themselves back into the Survivor Series picture.
The Oil Caps will play once again tonight without forwards Jake Dudar and Lucas Oliver. Both are showing progress in their recovery from injury and look on pace to return to the lineup in the upcoming weeks. Meanwhile, defenseman, Brett Sharples, may be done for a longer period of time after suffering a knee injury on January 2nd against Portage. He will undergo an MRI in the near future to determine his status for the remainder of the season.
Tonight is the second game of the five-game home stand spanning over the next 11 days. Make sure you stay up to date with all the latest happenings surrounding the team by following the team on social media or by signing up for the team’s Fan Mailer at the bottom of the OilCapsHockey.com home page.
As always, we encourage fans to sign-in to tonight’s game on the Oil Caps APP for your chance to win a $10 gift card courtesy of Chicken Chef in Virden.
Enjoy the game!