River Monsters Score Six, Dominate Mobsters in First Home Game Back

By Michael Deemer / Pittsburgh River Monsters

BEAVER FALLS, Pa.-- The River Monsters returned home to Brady's Run Ice Arena Saturday night against the Toledo Mobsters.

The River Monsters dominated the ice in every facet, defeating the Mobsters 6-1.

"It's good for morale,” D Ryan Dolence said. "The boys were buzzing. We knew [before the game] we were going to win. I mean, as sure as you can be that we're going to win, we knew we were going to."

"It feels pretty good," G Kevin Mackey said. "We've had a rough couple of weekends. So, it's nice to see everything come together finally. We're starting to head in the right direction here."

With the crowd buzzing with anticipation, the Monsters fed off the elation as F Perry Shiring started things off with a bang, opening the scoring 19 seconds into the contest.

"I just kind of came down and pulled it in tight," Shiring said. "In games, I usually just try to let shots go, and sometimes you get lucky, and they go in."

That lucky shot would start a blitz of Monsters' offense throughout the game. This was led by a multi-goal game from Shiring and Dolence, who had a goal and two assists. Dolence is now up to seven points (2 goals, 5 assists).

"I'm not really worried about the stats," Dolence said. "We're out here. We're playing hard. I just care if we win, that's more important, and that's what we did today."

Despite the dominating win, the team is unsatisfied with the result and is still looking towards the future.

"Our biggest thing is just get back to basics, put it behind us. We can't just look back in the past, we have to go forward," Dolence said. "We have to look at what we can improve upon. Because, you know, why focus on the good things? We gotta look at what we did wrong and fix it."

The River Monsters are back in action next Saturday, March 2 when they face the Soo Nordiques.