MUSKEGON, Mich – Riding high of their playoff-clinching victory last night, the Muskegon Lumberjacks sought after a home weekend sweep of the visiting Des Moines Buccaneers tonight at the L.C. Walker Arena. In front of 3,814 fans, the Lumberjacks used timely offense including two insurance tallies during the third to pull away with a 4-1 victory over the Buccaneers to complete the sweep and pick up their fourth consecutive victory overall and third in a row at home. Three Lumberjacks tallied multi-point efforts that consisted of Tommy Marchin leading the way with a three-point night.
The Lumberjacks (33-18-4, 70 points) jumped out to the early lead grabbing the first period’s lone goal to make it a 1-0 contest at the 13:43 mark as a three-on-two odd man rush led to Marchin feeding Mark Petaccio in the high slot, and the New Jersey native wristed home his 11th as a Lumberjack and 21st overall on the season top shelf over the glove hand of Ryan Ruck (8-11-8). Ryan Siroky received the secondary helper on the tally.
The opening frame saw only one penalty assessed to the Buccaneers late in the period as Muskegon outshot Des Moines by a 14-8 margin through the first 20 minutes of regulation.
The Buccaneers (21-21-13, 55 points) squared the game even at 1-1 early in the middle frame by the 4:21 mark as an initial shot from Brennan Sanford led to a rebound goal by Joe Lappin in the right faceoff circle past a sliding Eric Schierhorn (25-12-4) for his tenth of the year.
As the game steered into the second half of the second and regulation, the Lumberjacks regained their one shot lead at 2-1 by the 13:24 mark as a sweeping shot from the right wing by Marchin deflected off some skates in front and found its way through Ruck’s five-hole for his 21st of the season. Griffen Molino and Siroky assisted on the marker.
Like the first period, Muskegon eventually took its one goal advantage into the final intermission break while still outshooting Des Moines by a 30-22 spread after winning the shot battle during the middle frame, 16-14.
In the opening seconds of the third, Muskegon used a late second period penalty by the Buccaneers and turned it into a power play goal 17 seconds in courtesy of Matej Paulovic centering a backdoor feed to an open Molino to the right of the net, who one-timed his 16th goal of the season into the open net to double the lead to 3-1.
From there, the Lumberjacks’ defense and goaltending from Schierhorn (37 saves) stood tall that led to the Buccaneers pulling Ruck for the extra attacker with under three minutes remaining. Right after Ruck’s pulling, Marchin laced an unassisted empty net marker with 2:26 to go for his second of the night and 22nd on the season to cap off the three-goal triumph. The shots on goal battle ended up even for the game at 38-38.
Eric Schierhorn picked up his 25th victory of the season for Muskegon and is now unbeaten in his last eight starts (7-0-1) that includes a current six-game winning streak. Ryan Ruck took the road loss for Des Moines stopping 34 of 37 shots faced. Muskegon finished 1-for-5 on the power play, while Des Moines went 0-for-2. Marchin led the Lumberjacks’ offensive attack with a pair of goals plus an assist followed by Griffen Molino (one goal, one assist) and Ryan Siroky (two assists) both chipping in with two points each. Molino is now one point shy of tying the team’s USHL record for assists in a single season (Ryan Misiak – 43 assists in 2010-11) along with five points short of tying current teammate Matheson Iacopelli (63 points in 2013-14) for the overall scoring record in a single campaign. The Lumberjacks improve to 4-5-3 all-time against the Buccaneers since joining the USHL that includes a 3-3-1 mark at home and winning the last four head-to-head contests.
With Muskegon game report
You must be logged in to post a comment.