MUSKEGON – The Muskegon Lumberjacks have been struggling to get into the win column recently, and the early-season slump is making their coach a little impatient for success.
The Lumberjacks lost their fourth game in a row on Friday, falling to the Youngstown Phantoms 3-2 in a long eight-round overtime shootout affair at Muskegon’s Trinity Health Arena.
The team’s downturn is now two weeks old.
The Lumberjacks suffered a shootout loss to the Madison Capitols in their prior home game two weekends ago.
[1]Muskegon then dropped both road games last weekend to the Chicago Steel, the first a shutout loss, followed by one-goal loss that came after the Jacks blew a lead.
Friday’s loss made it four in a row, which head coach Colten St. Clair was visibly annoyed about.
“We have to get our stuff together on Fridays,” he said. “We have great weeks of practice, and then we get there and the moment is too big.”
Muskegon, now 3-4-2 this season, will look for a revenge win against the Phantoms on Saturday. Faceoff is at 6 p.m.
The Jacks had a lot of chances to score on Friday and avoid overtime and the subsequent shootout.
[2]Several of their shots hit the goalpost or the crossbar, starting five minutes into the game. A shot also hit the bar late in regulation, and the Jacks had some strong scoring chances in the overtime period.
But only two shots resulted in goals, and that was not enough.
“Too many, I think it was four,” St. Clair said about how many times the Jacks hit the post. “At least we had some chances, but that was the difference of the game. If you don’t capitalize, they can win it.”
A bright spot for the Jacks was goalie Oscar Westman, who stopped 26 of 28 shots through 65 minutes of action, and stopped six out of the eight in the long shootout.
“He did a good job tonight,” St. Clair said about his goalie. “We are still in the back-and-forth phase of who is going to take the net (as the regular starter), and I think he made a good push today, but we will see.”
[3]The Phantoms scored the lone goal of the first period at the 12:27 mark, on a power play tally by Lukas Zajic.
Muskegon responded just one minute into the second period when Anthony Thomas-Maroon found the net for the third time this season.
He took a pass from behind the net from Louis Jonerheim and snapped the shot from between the faceoff circles to tie the game 1-1.
Youngstown took a 2-1 lead 12:13 into the third period with a goal from Matej Mikes.
It looked like the Jacks were going to lose another regulation game until captain Rudolfs Berzkalns charged the net and scored his first goal of the season with 2:30 remaining in regulation.
[4]“He does what a captain does,” St. Clair said about Berzkalns. “We had a good talk earlier this week, and it was good that he took a step there (with the tying goal), but even the little things he was saying on the bench and in the room showed he is definitely a leader.”
The contest went into a five-minute overtime period, and both teams failed to score despite several close calls for the Lumberjacks, including a breakaway opportunity from Teddy Lechner with 18 seconds remaining.
Muskegon opened the overtime shootout with a Berzkalns goal, then Zajic knotted it up with a goal in the second round for the Phantoms.
Neither team could get the puck in the net after that until the eighth round, when Jesse Orlowsky scored to give Youngstown the 2-1 shootout advantage. Phantom goaltender Owen Lepak closed it out with his seventh and final shootout save.
“It comes down to mistakes and who stays on the plan the longest,” St. Clair said. “You can call it a slump, but you must do things to get out of it.
“You don’t get to sit there and feel bad. I am tired of losing, so why don’t we just do something about it?”
[5]