Karpa Scores Twice in Loss to Grizzlies

West Valley City, Utah – Zakary Karpa scored twice and Cullen Ferguson registered his first multi-point game but the Bloomington Bison fell 5-3 to the Utah Grizzlies at the Maverik Center on Friday evening.

After coast-to-coast action early, the Bison surrendered a 1-0 while shorthanded at 7:25 of the period. The first tally came just 27 seconds into either team’s first powerplay of the game, and two minutes later, Bloomington earned an opportunity on the man-advantage. While the powerplay did not capitalize within its two minutes, less than 40 seconds after returning to even strength play, the visitors tied the game. Mikhail Abramov skated the puck to the front of the net from the corner in offensive ice and created a rebound. With chaos in front, Chris Ortiz drifted in from the blue line and blasted in his first goal of the season from the top of the far circle. The tally marked his 150^th career ECHL point and evened the score with seven minutes and six seconds left in the period. Just over two minutes later, Utah finished off a seam-feed to the slot to regain its lead.

Karpa notched the only goal in the middle frame to tie the game 2-2 when he deflected in a shot-pass from Ferguson and Riku Ishida at 16:22. The Bison killed off two penalties in the second period and were outshot 16-9, in part due to the lopsided special teams chances.

Back-and-forth play resumed coming out of the second intermission, and the Bison fell behind for a third time in the contest just one minute and 50 seconds into the final stanza. Unlike in the prior two instances, this time Bloomington did not answer with the follow-up goal. After failing to capitalize on a powerplay that did create chances, the Bison fell down 4-2 mere seconds after the Grizzlies returned to full strength. Ishida, Ferguson and Sullivan Mack set up another Karpa redirect at 11:15, with the latter two registering assists, but Utah iced the game with a final goal with less than three minutes remaining. Bloomington held the Grizzlies from scoring an empty-net goal but was not able to score with an extra attacker on the ice for the final two and a half minutes.