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McFadden a force as Storm wins fourth straight (7 photos)

Three assists and a shut down job on Owen Sound's top line for the Guelph Storm veteran

It was hard to tell what Garrett McFadden was prouder of after Friday night’s big win over the Owen Sound Attack.

Was it the three assists – all in the third period – that fuelled the 6-3 victory? Or was it the plus-3 he recorded shutting down Owen Sound’s top line?

“To be honest, before the game I didn’t even know that I would be matching up with them, but it’s a good challenge,” McFadden said.

He was paired mostly with Mark Shoemaker and Owen Lalonde, out there all night against the Attack’s best line of Nick Suzuki, Jonah Gadjovich and Ethan Szypula.

That line had just one assist between them and were a combined minus-10 on the night.

“As you get more experience in this league you expect to play against the best players every night. Especially for me, I kind of want to prove something to myself and I want to be out there against the best guys and try to showcase myself a little bit,” the fifth-year veteran McFadden said.

Coach George Burnett said, with a little grin, that McFadden is supposed to play well.

“He’s been here for five years,” Burnett deadpanned.

“We expect a lot of him. He’s got such dynamic feet and mobility to get out of problems and keep the ice open and create. When he does that he’s amongst the top defencemen in the league,” the coach said.

Burnett felt his team was relatively lucky to be tied 3-3 after two periods.

“We’ve got to get a lot better in the neutral zone. We spent a lot of time watching them go through us and we have have a lot of work to do in that area,” the coach said.

Once again it was the unlikely dynamic duo of Barret Kirwin and Cedric Ralph coming through with big goals in the third period for Guelph, Ralph getting the go-ahead goal at 9:07 of the third and Kirwin making it a two-goal game at 17:32.

“It’s unbelievable,” McFadden said. “It’s great to see those guys having all this success. They work hard every single day and it’s great to see them get rewarded for it.”

Nate Schnarr iced it with an empty netter.

Anthony Popovich made 41 saves.

“Everyone loves the offensive games, but we knew that if we got in a shootout with these guys we probably weren’t going to win,” McFadden said. “We just stuck with the game plan tonight and that’s why we got the two points.”

The Storm will host the Kitchener Rangers Sunday at 2 p.m. in their annual Teddy Bear Toss game.


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Tony Saxon

About the Author: Tony Saxon

Tony Saxon has had a rich and varied 30 year career as a journalist, an award winning correspondent, columnist, reporter, feature writer and photographer.
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