Wallington, NJ - December 23 , 2007

The Growl struggled last season against the Grizzlies and after a split on opening weekend with them, they were determined to set the record straight on who the better team was.

Coming in the Growl has won four in a row and looking to keep their hot streak going. Defeating the Grizzlies is tough enough, but at home it would be even a tougher task.

Red hot goalie Mike Maczynski was scheduled to make both starts and improve on his perfect PIHA record thus far. Game one started in a positive direction, as the Growl tallied the first three goals of the game in the first period. Jon Lucente scored first and two more goals by Ryan Mara, continued the pairs hot weekend. Former Growl minor leaguer snuck a rare wrist shot past Maczynski and the Growl held a 3-1 lead at the half.

The Growl tightened up the defense in the second half and Matt Grabert was able to capitalize against a frustrated Grizzlies team. JJ Ficther did score another goal before the end of the game, but the Growl held on for a convincing 4-2 victory.

Game two started out as positively as the first. Erik Barney scored for a 1-0 lead. The Grizzlies showed they had some fight as the they scored with 11 seconds left in the period and the game was 1-1 at the half.

They carried the momentum into the second period as they scored to take the 2-1 lead. Once again the Growl found themselves down with less then two minutes to go. However, the team found a way to pull a bit more magic out of their hat. Ryan Mara scored on the powerplay with just 1:46 left in the game and the Growl was once again back in the game. After a time out to rest their top line, the Growl struck again as Mara completed a 9 goal weekend with the game winner, just 23 seconds later. Maczynski held the fort in the closing minutes and the Growl completed a 6-0 weekend road trip with anothert miracle 3-2 come from behind victory.

Maczynski recorded his 7th victory of the season and only allowed six goals in 5 games played over the trip. Now at 7-0, Maczynski is among the league leaders in all goaltending categories.

The six victories improved the Growl to 8-2 and in first place in the Atlantic division. The team is now off for over a month, until they host the Long Island 495ers and the NJ Stampede at the end of January.