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Wings Host Rough Riders Tuesday

December 8, 2003 - United States Hockey League (USHL)
Danville Wings News Release


We welcome you to the David Palmer Arena for a very rare Tuesday night home game. The division-leading Cedar Rapids Rough Riders come calling, in a tilt that has significance in the divisional standings. Cedar Rapids pays their first visit to Danville. Your Wings have played their twice, splitting by winning a 6-3 contest and losing 6-1 two weeks ago. The Riders just had a 9 game winning streak snapped by a 5-3 loss at Des Moines Saturday night. That streak is what thrust them into the East Division lead. Mark Carlson helms the squad, and has been their only coach since their inception 4 seasons ago. The Riders have a high scoring squad with good speed, led by John Gaborek and Bill Carroll. They are anchored in net by Joe Fallon, one of the USHL's elite goalkeepers.

The Wings are in the middle of a 5-games-in-9-days stretch. We split on the road this past weekend, topping Chicago 2-0 and losing to Waterloo 3-1. Chris Anderson scored his first Junior A goal for the game winner in Chicago, and Justin Tobe had a 30 save shutout, his first of the year. Bryan Marshall scored our other goal. Saturday, Tomas Klempa was our lone scorer in a game we were outplayed from the first drop of the puck. Tobe was sensational and kept us in it. All three of Waterloo's goals were scored on the power play, a rare hiccup for our usually stalwart penalty killers, and our league leading power play was held to nothing over both games, a major disapointment. The challenges don't get any easier as the week progresses. We have one of our longest road trips of the year this weekend, as we leave Thursday for a Friday game against the River City Lancers and follow that with a Saturday tilt against the Tri City Storm. Those teams are the West Division leaders, so over these 5 games, we'll have played 4 of the 5 best teams in the USHL. After that, we finally get to return home for consecutive weekends hosting St. Louis, seeing the Riders return here for a Saturday tilt, and then we greet Green Bay for back to back games.

The team got some good news last week with Klempa committing to the University of Nebraska-Omaha for the 2005-2006 season. That means the diminutive speedster will be back next year for his final tour of duty with the Wings. Also, Alex Foster and Derek Patrosso were chosen to represent our team and the USHL in the Viking Cup World Junior Tournament right after Christmas.

For us to be successful tonight, we're going to have to blunt the Riders offense and limit their odd man breaks, and get our special teams back on the right track.

As always, your support is appreciated and we look forward to living up to your expectations...and making sure ours are always higher!

The Danville Wings Coaching Staff

Wings weekly alumni update

December 8, 2003 - Derek Edwardson of Miami had a big week last week as he scored 2 goals and assisted on another. Other former alum who starred were Todd Grant (Miami) G; Chris Busby (Miami) A; Jeremy Hall (Niagara) G,A; Marek Dora (Michigan Tech) A; Peter Szabo (St. Cloud) G; Lukas Dora (Denver) G; Shane Saum (Air Force) G; Theo Zacour (Air Force) G, 2A; Jason Tejchma (UMass-Lowell) G; and Dov Grumet-Morris notched a win stopping 26 of 28 shots. In the Pro ranks Jake Ortmeyer (Wheeling ECHL) had 2 assists

Wings drop pair over weekend

On Friday night the Wings went into River City looking to break out of a 2 game slump but the Lancers would not cooperate as they went on to win 3-2. In a tight, well played game the Wings and Lancers went scoreless for the first two periods before a high scoring third period. River City scored two power plays in the first 10 minutes before the Wings got on the board with two goals in 11 seconds. Kelly Sullivan scored on a pass from Derek Patrosso and moments later Ryan Hoehn got the equalizer with assists from Bryan Marshall and Alex Foster. But with 4 minutes to go in the game River City scored the game winner. Justin Tobe took the loss stopping 28 of 31 shots.

On Saturday night the Wings couldn't get back on track as they fell 6-4 to Tri City. Todd McIlrath, Kelly Sullivan, Derek Patrosso and Ryan Hoehn scored for the Wings.

The Wings will try to break out of a 4 game skid this weekend with back-to-back home games with St. Louis and Cedar Rapids.

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