MUSKEGON – Muskegon Lumberjacks captain Jack Williams has been in a bit of a scoring slump all season.
It really hasn’t mattered over the past few months, because lots of other players have been scoring goals, and Williams has been contributing with a ton of assists.
But the captain’s scoring touch has returned in recent games, and made all the difference on Saturday night in a home game against the Green Bay Gamblers.
Williams scored his first goal of the night just three minutes into the third period, tying the game 3-3 and completing a Lumberjacks comeback from a 3-0 deficit.
Then Williams finished off his night in the best possible way, scoring a power play goal just over a minute into the extra period, giving the Jacks a thrilling 4-3 victory in front of a big Star Wars Night crowd at Mercy Health Arena.
[1]Williams, who now has three goals in his last four games and seven on the season, said it feels good to finally start putting some pucks in the net.
“Finally,” he said. “It’s been a while. At one point I think I went 10 or 11 games, with 50-plus shots, and couldn’t score.”
“He had two huge goals there,” said Lumberjacks Coach Mike Hamilton. “For a guy who can shoot the way he can, his simple instructions were, just keep shooting.”
The victory was Muskegon’s seventh in a row, and improved its record to 19-10-3 on the season, good for 41 points and second place in the USHL’s Eastern Conference. The Jacks will host Green Bay again on Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m.
The game was penalty-filled and scrappy from start to finish, with a lot of pushing and shoving between th teams, and one great fight in the second period between Muskegon’s Jacob Guevin and Green Bay’s Matt Deboer.
Green Bay finished the game with 11 penalties for 41 minutes while Muskegon had eight infractions for 22 minutes.
[2]Penalties were a big problem for the Jacks in the first period, when they were whistled for four. They did a good job killing off the Green Bay power plays, only allowing one goal on four chances, but they were too busy doing that to get their offense in gear.
Meanwhile Green Bay scored twice in the first period, then on a power play just 12 seconds into the second, to take a 3-0 lead over the home team.
The confident Lumberjacks started their comeback in the second period, getting goals from David Hymovitch at the 1:24 mark and Jake Braccini at 12:31 to pull within a goal after two periods.
Williams knotted the game with his goal at the three minute mark of the third period.
The overtime period quickly turned promising for Muskegon when Green Bay was called for a holding penalty with just 29 seconds off the clock.
The game winning goal came when Quinn Hutson passed the puck to Jacob Guevin at the point, Guevin found Williams in the right circle, and his shot found the net and ended the game.
[3]“We found a way and got it done,” Hamilton said. “I didn’t like the first period. I thought we came out and gave them too much ice and their speed was a problem. But I loved the second period and how we responded, and the same way with the third. It was a great team victory.
“I really thought we would finish some of those (scoring) chances and win in regulation, but hey, I guess it makes it more exciting in overtime.”
The game ended well for Lumberjacks goalie Aleksander Kuleshov, who had a rough game last weekend in Madison and was pulled after two periods, and gave up the three goals in a little over one period on Saturday against Green Bay.
Kuleshov settled down after the third goal, keeping Green Bay from scoring and allowing his teammates to charge back and win. He finished with 19 saves on 22 shots.
“He played well,” Hamilton said. “He settled in and made some big saves.”