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DANBURY, CT - Friday night at the Danbury Ice Arena, the Danbury Whalers were scheduled to take on the Delaware Federals in an FHL regular season game. As it turned out, it looked more like a reunion with the host Whalers getting stuck with the bill.
Bolstered by a roster filled with players and coaches with ties to hockey in Danbury, the Federals scored five unanswered third period goals to stun the Whalers 6-3. It was the first win for the Federals who took the place of the Vermont franchise that ceased operations in December. The loss broke a Danbury four-game winning streak.
With the Federals not having a home rink to play in, the FHL has been cobbling together a roster for the Federals for each game they play. The players generally have come from the local area where the game is scheduled and up to now it has not been a fruitful situation as losses have piled up.
For the game Friday night, Brendan Tedstone, who was the general manager of the EPHL Danbury Mad Hatters less than five years ago, was brought in to coach the Federals and to lend a hand in the building of the roster. The range of players went from recent collegiate players to those who suited up for the former New Haven Knights (a UHL team which existed from 1999-2001) and some teams in between.
The first two periods of the game clearly belonged to the Whalers. Jay Meloff got Danbury off to an early lead 5:27 into the game. The lead doubled to 2-0 when Alex Goupil found the back of the net behind Delaware goalie Dan Meyers at the 14:46 mark. Dave Grimson, who played 66 games for the CHL’s Rapid City team a year ago, got the Federals on the board 24 seconds before the first period ended, cutting the margin to 2-1 after one.
The second period looked like a carbon copy of the first as Danbury came out firing at will on Meyers. The Whalers rang up 24 shots in the stanza to go with the 19 they recorded in the first, however they only had one goal to show for the effort. It came off the stick of Goupil, his second of the night and third in three games since joining the Danbury squad. The short-handed tally at 15:54 allowed the Whalers to take a 3-1 lead into the final twenty minutes.
Danbury continued to fire shots at Meyers but the young goalie’s confidence was building with every save he made. Finally, the Federals busted down the dam that Whalers net minder Peter Vetri had built. At the 9:17 mark, New Haven native and former Knight Mike Pomichiter beat Vetri to cut Danbury’s lead to 3-2. Two minutes later, Bill Newson notched a short-handed goal to tie the score at three. Just under two minutes after Newson, Michael Guerra, one of the few Federals who had been around to play more than one game, scored to put Delaware ahead for the first and last time in the game. Then 32 seconds after the Guerra tally, Jason Michelson lit the lamp, giving the Federals four goals in the span of 4:27 to go from two goal down to two goals ahead. Newson finished off the stunning victory with an empty net goal at 18:44.
The story of the night had to be Meyers, who recorded 62 saves on the 65 shots he faced. Down the other end, Vetri stopped 26 of the shots he saw. For all of the talk about whether the game would be a real war, the only sign of that was a spirited battle in the third between Delaware’s Jim DeMaio and Danbury’s Adam Houli and a late tussle between Michelson and the Whalers’ Jason McCrimmon, two players who had fought each other back in their EPHL days (Michelson with Danbury and McCrimmon with the New Jersey Rockhoppers).
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
Contact the photographer at bill.thebert@prohockeynews.com
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