Charlotte Checkers Weekend Roundup: Checkers Drop Season Opening Series To Texas Stars

The Charlotte Checkers dropped a pair of games to the Texas Stars this weekend as they kicked off the 2016-17 AHL season. The team allowed 10 goals over the course of the two games and simply could not find a way to keep the puck out of the net.

Friday’s game kicked off the season and the Checkers quickly found themselves in a 4-0 hole in the first period. Offensive help would come but not enough as they dropped their first decision by a score of 6-2. Derek Ryan and Andrew Poturalski were the goal scorers for Charlotte.

Saturday was a chance to show that Friday was just a bad start for the Checkers but instead they followed it up with a 4-2 loss. This was a better effort on the part of Charlotte as they kept it close at 3-2 before allowing an empty netter late. Poturalski added his second goal in as many games and Patrick Brown found his way onto the score sheet. Alex Nedeljkovic started both games for the Checkers in his first taste of professional hockey.

The Checkers next set of games is against the Iowa Wild on Friday, October 21st and Saturday, October 22nd.

Analysis

• As stated in our Checkers Training Camp Recap piece, Andrew Poturalski is a prospect that has flown under the radar of many fans but may have a good season. He got off to a great start this weekend and was able to put a lot of shots on net as well as he finished the weekend with 8 SOG.
• Don’t throw Alex Nedeljkovic under the bus yet. There is going to be stretches of games such as these where the young net-minder will struggle greatly as he gets acclimated to professional hockey. Sloppy defensive play can be to blame for this weekend’s set of games but Nedeljkovic must continue to work hard if he is to become the future in net that we expect him to be.