The Soo Kewadin Casino Indians look as though they have finally turned the corner.
After starting the North American Hockey League season with just two wins in their first nine games, the Michigan Soo Indians improved to 5-2-0-1 in their last eight games with a weekend sweep of the Cleveland Barons on home ice on Friday and Saturday nights.
A solid all-around effort on both nights got the Indians the victories as Joe Shawhan's club is beginning to show the grit and desire that he was desperately looking for in the early part of the season.
With some key veterans, including the likes of Ray Kaunisto, who was a key offensive weapon, as well as veteran defenceman Rob Hodnicki among others, missing time on the weekend, the Indians managed to battle through those injuries and put together two solid efforts en route to the sweep.
On Friday night, the Barons looked as though they were going to make short work of the Indians as Jake Coyle scored twice in the opening period as the Barons opened up a 2-0 lead only to see the Indians scored three unanswered goals off the sticks of Kaunisto, who sat out Saturday night's game, R.G. Flath and Tommi Maata to drop the Barons by a 3-2 score.
Saturday night's effort was an even better one for the Indians.
After an opening period that saw the two team's trade goals—with Jim Pentecost scoring for the Indians and John Goebel scoring for the Barons—the Indians began to take over the game in the second period.
The Indians took the lead at 13:17 when Nik Sellers scored on the power play, but it was the Indians play defensively that caught most people's attention.
The Indians outshot Cleveland 14-4 in the period, with three of the Barons shots coming on a late period power play. The Barons did not have a shot on goal until just over three minutes left in the period.
Joe Beaudry scored another power play goal for the Indians early in the third before Joseph Bacon scored shorthanded at 13:21 to seal the Barons fate and gave the Indians all the insurance they needed as they held on for a 4-1 victory on the evening.
Shawhan was pleased with his team's effort all weekend, especially considering the amount of injuries the team has had to go through recently.
"We're a banged up hockey team right now," Shawhan said. "We've got a lot of key guys (like Hodnicki, Kaunisto and Ryan Ward) out right now and we didn't play that badly."
Shawhan expressed how important points are becoming and did say that he felt his club could have taken points last weekend against the US National Team Development Program—a series which saw the Indians swept on home ice.
"We could very well have taken points last weekend against Team USA," Shawhan said. "These four points this weekend were four big points for us. We need to control what we can control. We're going into next weekend (a road game against the Toledo IceDiggers) with optimism."
The Indians have just two games, both on the road, over the next two weeks as they face Toledo next weekend before heading to Youngstown, Ohio to take on the Phantoms on Nov. 27.
Next home action for the Indians will be Dec. 10 and 11 when the aforementioned US National Team Development Program makes another appearance at the Chi Mukwa Community Recreation Centre. Start time on both days is 7 p.m.