Dimmitt, Ford lead Carolina to second straight victory over Danbury

 Winston-Salem, NC – For the second straight night, the Carolina Thunderbirds put six goals past Frankie McClendon en-route to a victory. This time, a pair of goals by Cameron Dimmitt and two more from Gus Ford were more than enough in a 6-2 victory.

Beginning in a similar fashion to Friday night’s contest, the Thunderbirds relied on depth scoring to carry them in the early going of the game. Jacob Schnapp found the puck in the low slot after Dawson Baker forced a turnover. His shot beat McClendon low to the glove side, giving the Thunderbirds the 1-0 lead. Later, at 4-on-4, Cody Oakes scored one of his proprietary goals. Picking the puck up in his own zone, Oakes flew down the left wing, cut towards the goal and buried his own rebound to the short side of McClendon, making it 2-0. To this point, the game was a carbon copy of Friday, with Carolina carrying a 2-0 lead into the locker room after 20 minutes.

The second period brought more creativity, and some old fashioned power forward work from the Thunderbirds. Everett Thompson lowered the shoulder, cut to the goal and sent a 10-foot saucer pass onto the tape of Cameron Dimmitt. His first goal since October 30^th gave Carolina a comfortable 3-0 lead. Tim Perks’ second goal of the weekend gave Danbury some life, but the Thunderbirds quickly shut that down. On the powerplay, John Buttitta and Tommy Cardinal created confusion in front of the goal. Gus Ford took advantage of the chaos and snapped his team-leading 12^th goal of the season past the glove of McClendon. He and the Thunderbirds walked off the ice with a 4-1 lead after 40 minutes.

In the Third, the Thunderbids put things to bed with two more goals. John Buttitta entered the goal at 98 points in his FPHL career. With his assist on Gus Ford’s 2^nd period goal, as well as the one that began the 3^rd, Buttitta arrived at the 100 point plateau. Buttitta joins Jiri Pestuka, Daniel Martin and Cameron Dimmitt as active Thunderbirds with 100 points or more. Dimmitt would add a powerplay goal that snuck its way throught traffic to make it 6-1 later in the period. Jonny Ruiz would get one back for Danbury to make it 6-2, but the Thunderbirds held on for the win.

Evan Morrison got his fourth win in his fourth start for Carolina, making 25 saves on 27 shots in the victory. Gus Ford extends his point streak to eight games, in which he has 19 points.

Carolina and Danbury will complete the weekend trilogy Sunday afternoon. Puck drop from Winston-Salem is set for 4:05pm.