Jr. Blues travel to Topeka for two against the red-hot RoadRunners

Springfield Junior Blues (3W, 7L, 2OTL, 8 points: 7^th in North Division)

Topeka RoadRunners: (9W, 1L, 2OTL, 20 points: 1^st in South Division)

Friday Night (10/19/12) 7:05 pm – Inside the Kansas Expo

Saturday Night (10/20/12) 7:05 pm – Inside the Kansas Expo

While the new-look Springfield Junior Blues certainly are young, the chemistry with all of the veterans and young kids is starting to come together as one—and if you haven’t noticed that yet, it won’t take long. The youth and leadership showed for itself last weekend inside the Nelson Center when the team protected its home ice against the divisions’ top team thus far.

Will that trend continue? Time will tell us all about that tale, but for now, a new trend must start, and hopefully that will start itself up tonight. Springfield only has three wins on the season so far. Guess what though? All three are in Springfield inside the Nelson Center—which don’t get me wrong, is huge for a team that has a lot of young kids still trying to find themselves, but winning on the road is as important as winning anywhere in the sport of hockey—especially in the North American Hockey League.

Starting tonight, for the first two meetings between the two teams this season, Springfield (3-7-2, 9) will travel to the Kansas Expo to face off against Topeka (9-1-2, 20) on both Friday and Saturday night’s. Both games will drop the puck at 7:05 pm and will be aired live online on the official website of the Springfield Junior Blues.

The RoadRunners are an impressive 4-1-1 at home inside the Kansas Expo, while the Junior Blues are an overall 0-3-1 on the road away from the Nellie. Topeka has scored 42 goals and allowed just 22 on the season while our Junior Blues have totaled 30 goals scored, along with 38 goals allowed.

The Jr. Blues are led by forwards’ Brett Skibba and Mike Fazio on the offensive attack; and led by both of the likes of Jack Sloan and Theo Tydingco. Skibba, who won the NAHL’s Number One Star of the week award following last weekend’s performance, looks to add on to his goal total as he has scored ten so far. Last weekend against Port Huron, Skibba scored four goals on just seven shot attempts.

The keys to winning these games besides the fact that we need to get off to a fast start, the forwards need to make opportunities in the middle and excecute against defensemen as good as both Scott Dornbrock and also Mick Bruce. Forcing them into penalties would be huge as well considering Topeka enters the contest at third overall in penalty killing (91.7%) an sixth on the advantage (21.3%). Sean Gaffney is a monster as well, so while I expect a hungry team in Topeka, I expect a good weekend performance from our hometown Jr. Blues.