In many a case, Saturday night was a wild and almost wacky evening of hockey for the New York Ranger and New York Islander prospects. It very much was not an evening for who like low scoring defensive hockey but boy it was a lot of fun. Ranger's First Star Michael St. Croix
It was just last Wednesday when Michael St. Croix (NYR 2011 4th) of the Edmonton Oil Kings was a one man gang against the Lethbridge Hurricanes. In that game St. Croix had a 5 point night highlighted by a hat trick and a 1-2-3 first period.
That game was a 10-3 road win for St. Croix and his Oil Kings so when the same two teams met Saturday night in Edmonton nobody was really sure what to expect. The first period was a close checking affair with Edmonton scoring the only goal of the period.
The second period was much of the same except Lethbridge scored the only goal to tie things up and honestly St. Croix was really standing out more for his defensive play. The poor Lethbridge Hurricanes did not know what hit them in the 3rd period.
In a span of 3:45, St. Croix put up 3 points to break open what had been a close game and send his Oil Kings on the way to their 3rd straight win 5-2. St. Croix in that span was secondary assist, goal and then primary assist.
Lethbridge scored a goal after the St. Croix show only to see St. Croix score an empty netter for the 5th Edmonton goal and his 4th point of the period. St. Croix in his last 4 games has gone 6-5-11 to jump up to 13th in the WHL in scoring at 13-20-33 (2nd among NYR prospects).
St. Croix was not the only one to have an interesting evening as we had 4 very good performances by the Ranger prospects which you can find right here.
If you think that this is a repeat of yesterday's Islander reporter then you would be close to being correct. Brock Nelson (2010 1st) followed up his 3 point performance leading his North Dakota Fighting Sioux to a win over the 4th ranked Colorado College Tigers on Friday with a 3 point performance leading his North Dakota Fighting Sioux to a win over 4th ranked Colorado College Tigers on Saturday.
Yes we know poor grammar, horrible use of a run on sentence etc but we wanted to make the point clear that Brock Nelson helped his Fighting Sioux to their first weekend sweep of the season on Saturday. Friday it was a 2-1-3 night that led to the win and Saturday it was a 1-2-3 performance that earned North Dakota a 4-3 win.
In both cases Brock Nelson was a key player in both wins as it was his play on both evenings that led to the game winning goal being scored. Like we said yesterday it is time to consider Nelson as a legit prospect for the Islanders as the 6'4 forward has a lot more potential to his game than he gets credited for.
You can find the report on Nelson's game as well as the rest of the Islander evening right here
(St. Croix - Edmonton Oil Kings, Nelson- North Dakota)
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