Allen Americans goalie Chris Whitley is unable to stop a shot by Odessa Jackalopes forward Mike Ramsay in the 2nd period of Saturday night's game. The Jackalopes won the game, 5-1. (Photo Credit: John O'Neill)
All good things must come to an end.
For the Allen Americans, that good thing was the seven-game winning streak they had enjoyed since November 5th.
The visiting Odessa Jackalopes took advantage of every opportunity they were afforded in the game, and defeated Allen 5-1 on Saturday night, extending their own winning streak to three games and handing the Americans just their third loss of the season.
Still, as bad as the score might look to someone who didn’t watch the game, Americans Head Coach Dwight Mullins felt it wasn’t nearly as one-sided as it might appear.
“I think we made a couple of bad mental errors that we don’t usually make,” Mullins said. ”But I can’t fault our effort or energy or the time of possession in play.
“I really think a bounce here or there in the third period and we were probably going to go to overtime. That’s how we felt.”
The Americans even seemed to have the early edge, offensively, outshooting the Jackalopes, 6-1, through the first half of the opening period.
A fight between Jackalopes defenseman Garret Gruenke and Americans forward Liam Huculak kept the crowd into what seemed to be a low-scoring first period.
Shortly after the fight, though, the Allen defense made an uncharacteristic turnover. An errant pass from defenseman Iain McPhee found its way onto Jacks’ forward Kenny Corupe’s stick. Corupe came in alone on Allen goaltender Chris Whitley and beat him high to the stick side with a shot, giving the Jackalopes a 1-0 lead.
Less than two minutes later, the Jacks added to their lead while on the penalty kill. Dominic Leveille was in the penalty box on an interference call, and the Americans were set up in the Odessa zone.
Mike Lesperance read a pass and chipped the puck free into the neutral zone. Lesperance picked up the puck and carried it in alone, making a move on Whitley and sticking it in five-hole against the Americans netminder.
The Americans were not able to take advantage of any of the three power play opportunities they were given in the first period, and they trailed 2-0 at the intermission, despite out-shooting the Jackalopes 12-6.
Odessa opened up their lead further in the 2nd period. With just under seven minutes gone in the period, Corupe took the Allen blue line and dropped the puck to a trailing Mike Ramsay. Ramsay put a rocket on net that Whitley couldn’t find in time, and the Jackalopes were stunning the CHL’s top team, 3-0.
The Americans finally got on the board midway through the game. After Odessa’s Darryl Bootland was sent to the box for roughing, Allen went on their 4th power play of the night. Erik Adams drew Odessa goaltender Joel Martin towards him and then slipped the puck through the Odessa crease to Bruce Graham. The big center knocked it into the open net to cut the Jacks’ lead to a pair of goals, 3-1.
The Americans took a 26-15 shot advantage into the locker room at the 2nd intermission, but still trailed by a pair of goals on the scoreboard.
Allen ran into some penalty trouble early in the 3rd period. The Americans were called on three penalties in the span of 2:18. This led to two different 5-on-3 power plays for the Jackalopes. But, the Americans strong play on the penalty kill kept Odessa off the scoreboard.
Odessa continued to take penalties and put Allen on the powerplay three more times in the third period, but the Americans couldn’t solve the Jackalopes’ defense or Martin in order to draw closer. Allen finished the evening 1-for-8 with the extra man.
With just 1:30 left to play in the 3rd period, Jeff Pearce salted away the win for Odessa. Pearce stole the puck and broke in to the Americans’ zone with a step on his defender. Pearce crashed the net with puck and got Whitley down on the ice and the puck in the net for a 4-1 lead.
Allen got their final power play of the night shortly after Pearce’s goal, and The Jacks added an empty net goal with 1:13 left on the clock, which made the final score 5-1 in favor of Odessa.
“I can’t fault our want I can’t fault our willingness to get back into the game,” said Mullins. ”At the end of the day, they had an excuse to shut things down after the middle part of the second frame and I think they did that.”
The win was sweet revenge for a Jackalopes team that lost at home to Allen in two consecutive games the previous weekend.
Mullins wasn’t getting too down on his team for Saturday night’s loss.
“I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we’re 13-3 and we deserve to be 13-3,” Mullins stressed. ”I know there’s a lot of teams that would trade us in a heartbeat. I don’t think we’re going to get too worked up about tonight. We respect Odessa. They have a good hockey team. But at the end of the day, we made some mistakes that we don’t normally make and it cost us. We’re battling through a really difficult part of our schedule, and on the bright side we’ve been successful. We’ll just push through here and move on for tomorrow.
“It’s been a really good month for us,” Mullins said. ”We have a lot of really good hockey players and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. Even tonight, with their commitment and energy level right until the buzzer went. There isn’t a guy in there that didn’t want a better outcome.”
The Americans will now put this loss behind them and look forward to a Thanksgiving week that will see them in Arizona for three consecutive games against the Sundogs. Arizona currently sits in seventh place in the Berry Conference (4-7-2) and has struggled at home (1-3-0).
“We’re looking forward to it,” Mullins said of the extended stay in Arizona. ”We’ve been a good road team so I think we look forward to it. The other thing is that we’re leaving with a lot of time, where we’ll be able to take our days and recover and get refocused and just take things a day at a time. It’s nice when you have a day in between and you can just break the thing up a little bit. I think we’re looking forward to getting it over and getting through.”
