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February 14.

For the Newfoundland Growlers and their fans, that is a date that will have significance beyond being Valentine’s Day.

On that Tuesday night, the Growlers are scheduled to host the Maine Mariners at Mile One Centre, and a win will give Newfoundland the ECHL record for consecutive wins at home.

The Growlers’ home-ice streak stands at 18 after they skated to a 6-1 victory over the Brampton Beast Saturday night at Mile One, completing a back-to-back sweep of the Beast; Newfoundland had blanked Brampton 5-0 on Friday.

It means the defending ECHL champion Growlers are on the verge of breaking a 25-year-old league record; the 1994-95 South Carolina Stingrays also won 18 straight games at home.

Let's put winning 18 straight home games in perspective.



-Our last home loss was OCTOBER 19th, 2019.

-Scored 86 goals including 11 games with 5+ goals.

-The ENTIRE @stjohnsedge home schedule is 18 Games.



On February 14th, we BATTLE for #19

Tickets -->https://t.co/F4TrohaOQ4 pic.twitter.com/hrq2CrvIUd — Newfoundland Growlers (@NLGrowlers) February 2, 2020

The Mile One streak, which began Nov. 8 with a 5-3 win over the Atlanta Gladiators, has seen Newfoundland outscore the opposition exactly 2 to 1, registering 86 goals while giving up 43.

So it’s obvious part of the success is because the Growlers (32-11-1) possess league’s second-most prolific offence, but its also coincidental with a stingy defence, bulwarked by outstanding netminding.

That was evident on the weekend, when Parker Gahagen made both starts between the pipes for Newfoundland, allowing just one goal — by Brampton’s Daniel Leavens on Saturday — and stopping 57 of 58 shots directed at him in the two games.

That includes his work in a scoreless first period Saturday, when his teammates looked sluggish while being outshot 11-5 by Brampton.

Since joining the Growlers from the Southern Professional Hockey League in early December, Gahagen has gone 9-2-0, with a 1.66 goals-against-average and .947 save percentage. He’d be the clear-cut league-leader in both the latter categories if he was an official qualifier (a goalie needs to have played 900 minutes to qualify to be on the leaderboard; Gahagen has played 650).

For the most part, Gahagen has been part of a tandem with Angus Redmond, who came to the Growlers in early November. Redmond is day-to-day with a nagging injury (Maksim Zhukov backed up Gahagen on the weekend), but before being sidelined, he had won all 11 of his decisions, with a 2.44 GAA and .915 save percentage,

Combined, Gahagen and Redmond have a 20-2-0 record, 2.07 GAA and .931 save percentage.

Paired with an offence that has been on point pretty much since the start of the season, it’s led to a team that has earned 41 of a possible 46 points in the last nine weeks.

Newfoundland averages 4.09 goals per game, just a bit behind the Allen Americans (4.18), who lead the league in the category. What’s more, the scoring is spread out; the Growlers have 15 players with 20 points or greater, which as of Sunday, was more than any other team in the league.

That sharing was evident in Sunday’s record-tying win over the Beast (25-19-2), as Newfoundland got goals from six different players, including Marcus Power’s team-leading 21st of the season and Trey Bradley’s 12th of the campaign, but his seventh in the last 10 games (Bradley, who also had two assists, was first star of the contest).

Zach O’Brien, Justiin Brazeau, Matt Bradley and second-star Riley Woods had the other tallies for the home side. Defencemen Evan Neugold and Kyle Froese didn’t have any points, put both were plus-three on the night.

Trey Bradley’s goal came on one of three man-advantage opportunities for Newfoundland, which now owns the best power-play in the league ( 26.3 percent success rate).

Before they get a chance to set a new ECHL home-ice consecutive wins record, the Growlers will play a few away games, experiencing their third consecutive road trip consisting of three games in three days. It involves matchups next Friday and Saturday in Glens Falls, N.Y., against the Adirondack Thunder and a Sunday get-together with the Worcester Railers.

Twitter: @telybrendan

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