Holmberg nets hat trick in Bloomington win

BLOOMINGTON, Ill – Call it a Santa Hat Trick.
As Brett Holmberg was announced as the first star of the game, Santa hats joined the typical baseball caps being tossed onto the ice to celebrate his natural hat trick. Holmberg scored the first three goals of the game and all of the PrairieThunder goals as the home team defeated the Mississippi RiverKings 3-1 in front of 2076 fans on Wednesday night at U.S. Cellular Coliseum.
The PrairieThunder opened the scoring at 11:37 of the first period when Holmberg launched a second-chance rebound shot past RiverKings goaltender Alexander Pechursky for the only goal of the period. Kerry Toddington and Alan Mazur were credited with assists.
Holmberg’s second goal of the night came almost 20 minutes later at 11:28 of the second period. As the PrairieThunder pressured, Pechursky made several stops but could not cover the puck and Holmberg lifted the puck over an outstretched Pechursky to give Bloomington a 2-0 lead.
Less than two minutes later, with teammate Travis Granbois in the penalty box for hooking, Holmberg and Jason Dale prevented the RiverKings from breaking out of their own zone. Dale muscled a pass to Holmberg, who streaked into the zone, alone. Holmberg came straight through the slot at Pechursky before peeling off left and ripping a backhanded shot high over Pechursky’s stick. The short-handed goal capped off the natural hat trick for a 3-0 home team lead.
In the mean time, the RiverKings were being frustrated by Bloomington goaltender Brad Phillips. During one particular sequence on a power play, Nathan Lutz had what looked to be an open net, but his shot from the bottom of the circle was stopped as Phillips slid on his pads from across the net to smother the puck.
The boys from the River City were able to finally break the spell of Phillips just before the end of the second period, though. Mississippi’s Patrik Levesque skated around defenders and the net, making several figure-8’s before finding Louis Dumont open on the right point to cut the PrairieThunder lead to 3-1.
Late in the first period, Bloomington’s Chris Cloud made a great check along the boards near the PrairieThunder bench. Mississippi’s Darrell Stoddard took up the cause of his teammate. Cloud and Stoddard dropped the gloves and Cloud proceeded to land successive punches that put Stoddard on his back.
More fisticuffs erupted in the third period when Craig MacDonald and R.G. Flath appeared to drop the gloves. While they were being escorted to the penalty boxes, Mazur and Stoddard were washing each other’s faces and this eventually led to them grappling and throwing punches. In the end, MacDonald and Flath were each tagged with Roughing minors while Mazur and Stoddard received five-minute Fighting majors and 10-minute Game Misconducts.
Perhaps unsung, was the PrairieThunder defense. While Phillips stopped 30 of 31 shots, the defense cleared a lot of rebounds away, not allowing second shots. The same could not be said for the RiverKings. Mississippi allowed 28 shots, but many of those were second chances.
Special teams play was not so special for either team, as the two squads combined to go 0 for 10 on the power play, with the RiverKings giving up the shortie to Holmberg. The penalty kill units were far more successful. Credit the PrairieThunder unit for keeping the RiverKings off the board with the man-advantage. Mississippi’s penalty kill unit benefitted from lackadaisical play on the part of the Bloomington power play unit.
Both teams are off through Christmas. The RiverKings head to Allen, Texas the day after Christmas while the PrairieThunder will host Evansville in a Boxing Day matchup.
Contact the author: Shaun.Bill@ProHockeyNews.com
Photographer Chris.Loudermilk@prohockeynews.com