Halifax Thunderbirds

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Thunderbirds are on TSN 1 and TSN 4 tonight:

FRI. DECEMBER 2

Philadelphia Wings (0-0) at Halifax Thunderbirds (0-0) – 7pm AT – ESPNews & Game of the Week on TSN

The 2022-23 Season starts off with a bang with two playoff teams playing on TSN as the Game of the Week and on ESPNews. While both teams made the postseason, they fell short of their goal of winning the championship with defeats in the Quarterfinals.

The Wings struggled through portions of last season to put the ball in the back of the net. This offseason they lost their two top scorers from last year in Kevin Crowley and Corey Small. On the flip side, they add MVP finalist Joe Resetarits who recorded 111 points last season for the Albany FireWolves. Sam LeClair will have more familiarity with this offense in his first full year with the team and the addition of 2021 first round selection, Hunter Lemieux as they look to continue their push in the playoffs.

For the Thunderbirds, they added more talent to their offense and kept the bulk of their defense which allowed less than 11 goals per game last year. The Thunderbirds love playing at home which showed in their 7-2 home record last season (even with games with limited fans or moving to play in Hamilton). Halifax signed the ninth overall scorer in league history in Ryan Benesch back to their team, who was on the squad during the 2019-20 shortened season. They also add Randy Staats from PCLC in an offseason trade. While we have not seen Staats in a few years, he put up 70 points in just 12 games with the Swarm in 2019-20.

Last year, the Thunderbirds took both matchups against the Wings in back-to-back weeks by a score of 10-8 in both contests. In the latter game, Matt Rambo was carried the Wings with six points (3g, 3a) and the matchup at the faceoff dot was tied at 50% for both faceoff gurus in Trevor Baptiste and Jake Withers.

https://www.nll.com/news/what-to-expect-week-1/