EAST ALTON — The Alton Redbirds fought the Edwardsville Tigers to a 4-4 tie in Tuesday night’s MVCHA contest at East Alton Ice Arena behind strong performances from forward Bryce Simon and goalkeeper Caleb Currie.
The effort represents a dramatic turnaround from the first meeting between the teams on Nov. 2 when the Tigers clobbered the Redbirds 8-1.
Alton moved to 2-4-2 with the draw, while the league-leading Tigers are now 6-0-2.
“This is just what the doctor ordered,” first-year Alton head coach Steven Campbell said. “It was our best game all year. We came out from the beginning and we gave it to Edwardsville. It’s what we ordered all year from the kids — go hard every shift. You have to play your game.”
Simon turned in a hat trick, scoring all four of Alton’s goals. Simon scored three of his four goals in the first period, as the Redbirds led 3-2 at period's end.
Simon’s first two goals were scored on breakaways. He scored the first one early with 13:08 left to play to give Alton a 1-0 lead and he scored the late one at the 2:50 mark to tie the contest at 2-2. The forward scored again with 34 ticks left on the clock to give the Redbirds' their third goal, as he took a shot just feet from the goal. It marks Simon’s first hat trick of the season.
“We had a solid offense tonight,” Simon said. “We had a lot of nice breaks and Tanner St. Peters passed up to me. We had some good breaks and they were able to hold me down in the defensive zone. It was a really solid game.”
Campbell said he expects Simon to be a workhorse every night.
“He’s one of our leaders, a senior,” Campbell said. “This is by far his best game this year and he’s playing with a nasty cold.”
The Tigers’ scoring was spread around with four different players netting goals. In the first period, Colin Slater’s (5:49) goal tied the score at 1-1 and Conner Hinterser’s goal (5:11) gave Edwardsville a 2-1 lead.
“Both teams played hard,” Tigers' head coach Jason Walker said. “We’re disappointed with the result and the inconsistency shift by shift, but their goalie was awesome tonight. Simon was awesome tonight. They have a few guys that are good enough to beat you if you don’t play well and that’s what happened tonight. We have to be a harder team to play against, we’re young and we’re still learning.”
Currie faced a blistering 53 shots in the contest while the Redbirds recorded just 11 shots. After Simon’s first goal, he faced three shots in the next three minutes. In the first two minutes on the second period, the goalie fought off four shots.
“There was definitely a lot of pressure on me,” Currie said. “We needed to be big out there. Bryce Simon did great, he held us in there. Overall, I thought I played pretty solid and the team did well.”
Campbell said Currie has been the team’s backbone all year.
“He plays Central States Hockey which is two tiers above high school,” Campbell said. “He’s one of the best goalies in the league. The kid stands on his head every night.”
Campbell also said he expected Edwardsville to win the shots-on-goal war with four deep lines. The Tigers led 4-3 at the end of the second period with Kyle Meehan tying the contest up at 3-3 with a score at the 11:42 mark and William Schuster scoring with 30 seconds left.
Simon scored his fourth and final goal at the 9:50 mark of the third period. Simon took a shot from approximately 27 yards out and the puck flew past Tigers’ goalkeeper Dylan Twardy and into the back of the net to knot things at 4-4.
Currie faced 10 shots in the last six minutes of play. Simon had a couple more good chances late to earn Alton the win. He fired off a shot at the 1:04 mark that went over the goal and shot another with 36 seconds left to play that flew to the north of the goal.
Edwardsville is idle until 8:15 p.m. Dec. 6 when it faces Granite City at the Granite City Ice Rink. The Redbirds are back in action at 8:45 p.m. Dec. 6 vs. Bethalto at the East Alton Ice Arena.
