MUSKEGON – Tyler Tindall is just one of those guys with a flair for dramatic moments – even when it happens by accident.
A few weeks ago Tindall scored three third-period goals for the Reeths-Puffer hockey team in a huge comeback win over Kenowa Hills.
On Tuesday the Rockets mounted another comeback, erasing an early two-goal deficit and forcing overtime against Grand Rapids Northview at Muskegon’s Trinity Health Arena.
Tindall had a breakaway in OT and might have scored the winning goal seconds later, but was tripped from behind and awarded a penalty shot.
The goalie stopped him on that attempt and the game continued, but Tindall still wasn’t done.
Less than 30 seconds later, his teammate Eli Cuti ripped a shot from an extreme angle to the right of the Northview goal. Tindall happened to be skating in front of the goal crease when the puck arrived and it bounced off his skate and into the net, giving Reeths-Puffer a dramatic and much needed 4-3 victory.
“He shot it, it went off the goalie’s pad, I was just skating through and it hit my skate and went in,” Tindall said. “It was pretty exciting!”
Tindall’s goal capped a pretty amazing comeback by the Rockets, who faced tough odds all night. They played the game without their top scorer and three other players, they were outshot by a whopping 54-26 margin, and they trailed 2-0 after one period.
But R-P kept digging and battling all night long until victory finally arrived at the end.
The win was pretty necessary for the Rockets, who are trying to remain in the O-K Conference Fisher Division championship race. They came in with a 1-2 division record, and another loss would have made it very difficult to keep pace.
Now they will host Kenowa Hills on Thursday while still very much in the hunt for the title.
“So far this year we’ve had to do this on several occasions,” said a happy Reeths-Puffer coach Ryan Martin. “We’ve got to find a way to play our game for 51 minutes, but more times than not we’re finding a way to win.
“It was really tough playing with four guys out of the lineup, but we really couldn’t afford to take another loss. We really needed those two points (in the standings). We had guys missing, several guys playing out of position, and everyone had to chip in and do their part – and we got it done in the end.”
Northview dominated the first period and took a 2-0 lead with goals from Jacob Serva and Caden Gleason.
Carson Harwood scored a goal early in the second period for R-P to make the score 2-1, then goalie Isaiah Van Noord pretty much stood on his head to keep the game close.
The Rockets were outshot 18-7 in the second, but Van Noord made a series of saves – including several pretty amazing stops – and Northview still clung to the one-goal lead heading into the third period.
Van Noord ended up stopping 51 of the 54 shots he was pelted with.
“He made a lot of big saves,” Martin said about his goalie.
The final period of regulation was a roller-coaster for the Rockets.
Tindall tied the score with his first goal of the night on a power play with seven minutes gone in the third.
Northview’s Tanner Guerra put the visitors back on top 3-2 with a goal with 5:56 remaining, then R-P’s Isaiah Winters send the crowd into a frenzy when he skated in from the left side of the Northview net and scored on a wrist shot with only 1:16 left, sending the game to overtime.
“That was huge,” Martin said about Winters’ goal. “It gave us a lot of momentum.”
Everybody was expecting the game winning goal to come from Tindall on his penalty shot in the overtime period, but the Northview goalie managed to stuff the attempt.
“I knew there was a lot of pressure,” Tindall said about the penalty shot. “I knew I didn’t want to mess up, but the goalie stopped me. I wasn’t really upset. I was just kind of like, let’s go back and get it.”
Tindall said the entire team took that same never-say-die approach, no matter how hopeless the situation might have seemed at various moments.
“It was just a lot of teamwork, positive energy on the bench and all of us going 100 percent,” he said. “We just kept pounding and getting shots.”
