MU8KEGON – It’s hard to imagine a USHL team – or any hockey team, for that matter – scoring 10 goals in a game, with 10 different players finding the net.
But that’s exactly what the high-flying Muskegon Lumberjacks did on Friday night in a 10-6 victory on the road over the Madison Capitols.
The Jacks have been displaying a lot of offensive depth lately, with numerous players scoring on a regular basis, but Friday’s outburst was unusual, to say the least.
Phil Tresca, Ben Strinden and Jack Williams each scored in the first period.
Quinn Hutson, Tyler Hotson, Joey Larson, David Hymovitch and Jake Richard scored in the second period.
Jake Braccini and Noah Ellis added goals in the third period.
[1]The poor Madison goalie had no idea who he had to worry about the most, because every Lumberjack was a dangerous scorer that night.
‘It was pretty impressive,” said Lumberjacks Coach Mike Hamilton. “Every team generally has one or two lines to carry them through on a nightly basis. But right now our guys are able to share the minutes on the ice. We’ve got four lines going strong, and everyone is pushing each other. We have good, healthy competition internally right now.”
When asked if he knew the last time any USHL team had collected 10 goals from 10 different players in a game, Lumberjacks online play-by-play announcer Ryan Vallon said “I could not find any other similar situations for Muskegon regarding the 10 different goal scorers. The only thing I could find was the Lumberjacks’ 10-8 win last season on Nov. 14, 2020 against Chicago, but Danil Gushchin scored a hat trick in that game, among plenty of others that had multi-goal/point games.
“So I think it is safe to assume that this was the first time in team history to have 10 different goal scorers in the same game.”
Vallon also noted another amazing fact about the game – all six of Madison’s goals were also scored by different players.
“That brings it to 16 different goal scorers combined in one game,” he said. “That has to be a record of some sort.”
Moving up in the standings
After a miserable start to the season, the red-hot Lumberjacks have won 16 of their last 19 games, and have moved steadily up in the USHL’s Eastern Conference standings.
The Lumberjacks went into last weekend in third place. A quick glance at the standings told them their major objective was to put some distance between themselves and the fourth-place Madison Capitols, who were only three points behind the Jacks before Friday’s game.
The Jacks accomplished that goal, beating the Caps twice and pulling four points further ahead of them in the standings.
But in the process, they also managed to pull themselves within one point of second place.
The second-place Dubuque Fighting Saints entered the weekend with a five-point lead over the Lumberjacks in the standings, but lost a pair of games to the elite Team USA 18-Under squad. The Jacks’ earned four points with two wins in Madison, and suddenly are breathing down the Fighting Saints’ necks.
Chicago still leads the conference with 48 points, followed by Dubuque (37) and Muskegon (36).
[2]“That’s not something we had been talking about – it kind of snuck up on us,” Hamilton said about the sudden push for second in the standings.
Being in first or second place at the end of the regular season matters a lot, because the top two teams in each conference earn first-round byes in the playoffs, while the third- through sixth-place teams have to compete against each other in the first round.
Second place in the Eastern Conference is a familiar spot for the Lumberjacks. They spent most of the 2020-21 season in second, chasing first-place Chicago, and finished there in the final regular season standings.
It looks like this season could turn out to be very similar, but Hamilton stressed that it’s far too early to think about any of that.
“We just hit the halfway mark of the season,” he said. “There is lots of hockey left to play. It will probably be another 15 games or so before we start talking about that stuff more.”
The Lumberjacks will have a great opportunity to leapfrog past Dubuque this weekend with three home games in three nights – Friday against Team USA and Saturday and Sunday against Green Bay.
Special teams turnaround
The Lumberjacks’ big problem all season has been special teams. They have ranked last in the conference in both power play goals and the number of power play goals allowed.
Coming off the Christmas break, Hamilton said the team’s major goal would be to improve in that area.
There was some definite signs of progress last weekend.
On Friday against Madison, the Jacks scored on four of their eight power play opportunities. On Saturday they scored on two of five, and held Madison scoreless in four tries.
Over the two games they were 6 for 11 on the power play, while Madison was 2 for 7.
“Our power play was on fire,” Hamilton said. “And our penalty kill was 4 for 4 on Saturday. We even scored a short-handed goal. So there’s been lots of improvement in that area.”