MUSKEGON – Good teams know how to bounce back after getting the wind knocked out of them.

Are the Muskegon Lumberjacks one of those teams yet?

Saturday night’s rematch against the Madison Capitols at Mercy Health Arena will go a long way toward answering that question.

The Jacks came into Friday’s game riding an exciting four-game winning streak, and were looking like a team that was ready to start moving up in the USHL Eastern Conference standings.

It was pretty impressive, considering the Jacks only won once in their first 10 games.

But the Lumberjacks took a step back when they hit the ice on Friday, falling 7-3 to the Capitols in the opener of the two-game weekend series.

They fell behind early, giving up a goal within the first minute of the game, trailing 4-1 at the first intermission, and never getting back into the contest.

Muskegon fell to 6-8-3 on the season while Madison improved to 11-5-2.

The game was a bit of a setback for Lumberjacks starting goalie Platon Zadorozhny, who got the team’s first shutout of the season on Wednesday in a 5-0 road win over Team USA.

On Friday he lasted one period, stopping 9 of 13 shots before he was replaced by Alexander Kuleshov for the rest of the game.

Lumberjacks coach Mike Hamilton did not blame either goalie for the bad outcome.

“I don’t think you can put it on the goalies tonight,” he said. “I just don’t think we competed as a team. You got to win the first period and we got our asses handed to us.

“We have been playing hard and pounding pucks behind their defense, and today we turned the puck over. Tomorrow will tell us a lot. They are a good team and if we want to beat them we have to play a whole lot better.”

The outcome was also a disappointment on home ice. The Jacks have been playing great on the road, beating first-place Chicago, taking two in Dubuque and shutting out Team USA, but they couldn’t keep it going in Muskegon with a friendly crowd watching.

Muskegon is now 2-5-1 at home and 4-3-2 on the road.

Finally the loss brought back to mind two nagging problems for the Jacks – too many penalties and giving up too many power play goals.

The Jacks were whistled for eight penalties for 24 minutes, which included a 10-minute misconduct call. Madison scored three times on five power play opportunities.

“We have to keep the game in front of us,” Hamilton said. “We can’t give up so many odd man rushes, especially early in the first period. It was disappointing.

“They were fast-breaking, we were puck watching, and at the end it was a disappointing effort.”

Madison opened the scoring with a goal from Reid Pabich just 55 seconds into the game. The Lumberjacks quickly answered with a tally from Noah Ellis at the 2:34 mark.

But it was all Madison after that. The Capitols collected three more first-period goals from Michael Quinn, Nick DeSantis and Luke Mittelstadt and led 4-1 after one.

Madison got second period goals from Casey Severo and Pabich. Muskegon collected a late goal from Phil Tresca and trailed 6-2 at the second intermission.

Jack Williams scored a shorthanded goal for the Lumberjacks at 11:58 of the third period, then Ben Dexheimer finished things off with a goal for Madison at the 13:33 mark.

Capitols goalie Simon Latkoszy was very strong, stopping 30 of 33 shots. The Lumberjacks had a 33-29 advantage in shots on goal.