Feb 19 SANFORD WAS ‘LIGHTS OUT’; POWER OUTAGE AT COPPS

The lights went out at Copps Coliseum but the Hamilton Bulldogs still shined as they won their second in a row over the San Antonio Rampage 3-1.

An odd moment happened on Saturday afternoon as the arena lights dropped late in the first period. The power outage happened just as Hamilton’s Jimmy Bonneau and former Bulldog Eric Neilson threw off the gloves and put their dukes up. The two didn’t square off as quickly as they wanted to and were given delay of game penalties instead.

With 4:26 left in the first, the game was halted as the first intermission came premature. After 20 minutes the lights were back on and the remaining 4:26 was played, which was immediately followed by the second period.

As for Bonneau and Neilson, after a few gestures in the sin bin they threw it down as soon as their two-minute penalties were up.

Hamilton’s head coach, Randy Cunneyworth, said after a slow start the power outage gave his team time to fine-tune.

“Looking back it gave us a little bit of extra time to have a look at what was going on and it allowed that power play to score right after that halt,” said Cunneyworth.

“So I think we had to kind of readjust the sights a little bit and make sure the guys were picking up their game a little bit and I thought we did for the rest of the night.”

Overall Cunneyworth was pleased with the effort he saw on the ice in Saturday’s game.

“The guys kind of took match-ups the way we expect them to,” said Cunneyworth.

“Obviously when we had possession of the puck we took care of it but when we didn’t have the puck we were sound and we were looking to get them off the puck. More importantly we got back some discipline; we go undisciplined, which didn’t allow us to be very rhythmic in a lot of cases so I think we were much better that way so we got to continue with that.”

Bulldogs centre Dustin Boyd had an impressive night, recording one assist and a few offensive sparks for his team including a third period breakaway.

“(Boyd) was good, he was physical and did a good job both ways,” said Cunneyworth”

“I thought (Boyd’s) line was very affective, they were involved and competitive and that’s what we expect from those guys.”

Cunneyworth said the San Antonio Rampage is an “offensively gifted” team and Hamilton’s all-star goalie Curtis Sanford came up big in the third period.

“I think one of the keys was the late save (Sanford) made with less than five minutes to go,” said Cunneyworth.

“It was a huge two-on-one that he had to come up huge on and he did a great job at that point. That’s Curtis, doing the job at the right time and I thought that was an excellent save.”

Sanford made 20 saves in the game and picked up his 21st win of the year.

San Antonio’s Kyle Turris played his first game with the club after being sent down from the Phoenix Coyotes. In his debut, Turris had no points, no shots on net and ended with a minus one rating.

The first period saw three goals, as Rampages’ Bracken Kearns struck first on a power play. Later in the period Hamilton’s Ryan Russell scored and then Ben Maxwell scored the eventual game winner.

With San Antonio’s net empty with 20 seconds left in the game, Andreas Engqvist put it on ice with Hamilton’s third goal.

Tags: ahl \ Hamilton Bulldogs \ San Antonio Rampage