SOUTHAVEN, Miss. – After an overtime game the night before two tired teams took to the ice Friday night at The Desoto Civic Center. But the home town RiverKings, facing another possible elimination game, were able to find the energy and desire to treat the sparse crowd to a winning performance. The Colorado Eagles on the other hand were not able to overcome their own exhaustion while having to kill off an inordinate number of penalties.
Mississippi’s Stephen Margeson scored the first goal of the game on the second power play of the game for the ‘Kings at 8:53 of the first period. Margeson was assisted on the goal by Matt Summers and Jeff Nelson.
The Eagles evened up the score less than a minute and half later when Riley Nelson took a pass from Kevin Ulanski and broke in alone on ‘Kings goalie, Tyler Sims, for the equalizer.
Photo by Terry Sanford
Late in the first period on a delayed penalty call, Darrell Stoddard scored from the top of the left circle to put the RiverKings back up two to one.
Period number two saw only one goal scored. Although the Eagles, for one of the few times in this series, had the better of the play and took more of the shots, Bobby Chaumont netted the ‘Kings third goal at 13:41 of the middle period with Louis Dumont and Garrett Larson getting the helpers.
Andrew Lackner cashed in on yet another Mississippi power play less than three minutes into the third period. At four to one the Colorado team pushed hard to cut the ‘Kings lead in half and Steve Haddon did so at the 8:43 mark with his linemate Adam Hogg getting the lone assist.
Despite the effort from the visiting Eagles they could not overcome the resurgence of the RiverKings power play. Two more goals were scored on the man-advantage in the last two and half minutes of the final period to produce a win for the home team. Martin Gascon scored one of the goals while Summers garnered the last goal of the evening.
After goals five and six for the RiverKings, tempers flared and both teams engaged in pushing and shoving and a few bouts of fisticuffs. No doubt the bad blood will continue into the next game.
Both teams head back to Colorado for game six on Sunday night where the Eagles, up three games to two, will have another chance to close out the series.
Contact the author and photographer at terry.sanford@prohockeynews.com
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