Glen enjoys stint on Steelheads blue line

The Steelheads certainly knew that they were going to need a solid effort from their defense corps on Wednesday night against the Alaska Aces, a team with two of the league’s top-10 scorers in Peter Sivak and Stephen Perfetto. The task was going to be a bit tougher with blue-liners Charlie Dodero and Eric Springer unavailable for the game.

Idaho overcame that obstacle with flying colors on their way to a 6-1 win over the Aces. While the offense grabbed a lot of the headlines, there was one rookie making his first appearance on the Steelheads’ back end to help carry the defensive load.

David Glen, playing his 26th career professional game, jumped to the opposite end of the bench to play his first pro game as a defenseman. By the end of the night, Glen’s stat line looked pretty darn good with a plus-2 rating and a couple of shots on goal from the left point.

“I think it went pretty well,” laughed Glen at Thursday morning’s practice. “I really just wanted to keep things simple and get the puck into the hands of the forwards as quickly as I could. I played a lot with Zach Bell and he and the other guys were really good about talking with me during the game and getting me up to speed.”

Glen did have a little bit of a head start in learning his new assignment. Glen played defense in his youth hockey days, switching to forward when he was a bantam.

“I was only about five feet tall back then so I didn’t think I had much of a future as a defenseman,” said Glen. “I made the switch to forward and that’s worked out pretty well.”

The Steelheads were in control of the game from the midway mark of the first period, jumping out to a 2-0 lead on goals from Joe Faust and Kellan Lain and never looking back. Though the Aces sent 45 shots on net and goaltender Branden Komm was tasked with making several impressive stops among his 44 saves, the shot totals at game’s end were not an indication of the pace of play for Idaho.

“I thought it was one of our best games of the season in the defensive zone,” said Glen. “I thought we did a really good job of keeping them to the outside and when we got the puck we were able to get the puck up the ice to our forwards quickly. I think that’s why we did as well as we did offensively.”

The Steelheads earned their first goal off a rush resulting directly from a turnover forced high in the Idaho zone. Anthony Luciani’s breakaway goal came off another strong defensive play by Rob Linsmayer inside the Steelheads blue line.  The Aces threw shots on goal from all angles, but few were from prime scoring areas. And when the Aces made mistakes, the Steelheads made them pay quickly.

The Steelheads put on one of their most thorough defensive games, with Corbin Baldwin getting even more responsibility on seven penalty kills, Joe Faust continuing to chip in offensively, and Miro Karjalainen playing a physical role with increased ice time. Travis Walsh and Zach Bell were dependable again, Bell helping maintain the defensive zone and Walsh continuing to function as an effective puck mover.

And there to help was a young forward thrown into a new position, who looked right at home.