The Muskegon Lumberjacks seem to be taking a page out of the Chicago Steel’s playbook, and not in a good way.

After leading the USHL’s Eastern Conference all season, Chicago hit a slump in January that continued into February, allowing the soaring Lumberjacks to catch them at the top of the standings.

But now the Jacks have encountered a bit of a slump of their own and have fallen back into third place in the conference following a 7-5 loss to the Youngstown Phantoms at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio on Friday night.

The Lumberjacks have now lost four of their past five games. They have a 23-12-6 record and trail Chicago by two points and Dubuque by one in the conference standings.

Muskegon and Youngstown will have a rematch in Ohio on Saturday night.

The score was tied 2-2 after the first period. Muskegon collected goals from Joey Larson and Quinn Hutson, while the Phantoms had goals from Grant Porter and Justin Varner.

Winter Wallace and Porter led off the second period with goals for Youngstown, then Larson and Williams found the net for Muskegon, leaving the score tied 4-4 with less than two minutes to go in the period.

Wallace scored again with less than a minute remaining, and the Phantoms led 5-4 at the second break.

Jake Richard scored early in the third period for Muskegon, knotting the score at 5-5, but Youngstown got two goals within the last two minutes of the game from Kyle Bettens and Shane Lachance to steal the win.

Cameron Korpi started in goal for Muskegon and had 13 saves on 16 shots before leaving the game late in the second period. He was relieved by Chase Clark, who had 7 saves on 10 shots.