Bourbon Barrel Stays Home

This past weekend the Kentucky Hockey Club had a two game series with instate rival Louisville. Early this season Kentucky traveled to Louisville and dropped the game with a 3-2 loss in overtime. The hockey team is notoriously known for their midnight puck drops and screwing up sleep schedules and travel times for many teams. This past weekend, Big Blue Nation didn’t see that as a factor to not show up for the team. The club announced pre-sale tickets early Wednesday morning which filled about the entire capacity of the barn. While many people who didn’t buy a ticket waited in line for hours hoping to get in.

As for Friday nights game well it didn’t disappoint. Nick Mingione, University of Kentucky Baseball coach, made a special appearance to do the honorary puck drop and get the crowd going minutes before go time. But this crowd was ready for the bluegrass rivalry and were feeding into every hit and penalty call all night. 40 seconds into the game the Cats stunned the Cards with an early goal and it was all Kentucky the rest of the night. With a 3-0 first period it was looking all good on the good guys side. The Cats added on one more with a power play goal which was soon followed up by Louisville’s lone goal of the night. To ice the cake the Cats put one more in the back of the net and night one of the rivalry series was over.

The following day, Kentucky traveled up to Louisville for the last game of the series with it tied up one a piece and a win would clinch them a playoff spot. The first period was much more even this time around with no goals. Then in the second it was Kentucky to find the net first and lead 1-0 going into the last period. Then the floodgates opened, Kentucky went on to score four goals in the third period and have a shutout game! The Cats left Louisville the Bourbon Barrel and a ticket to the TSCHL playoffs.

Kentucky looks to host Ohio University in a two game series next week to end their home regular series games.