(Logo courtesy Bloomington Thunder)
By WJBC Staff
DUBUQUE, Iowa – Despite a late comeback, the Bloomington Thunder could not overcome an early 3-0 deficit and fell to the Dubuque Fighting Saints, 5-2.
The Thunder fall to .500 at 20-20-7 while the Fighting Saints move to 27-13-4 and trail the Youngstown Phantoms in the standings by three points.
The first period delivered 25 total shots on net and even opportunities in the period, but the Fighting Saints would take a 2-0 lead into the intermission. Brett Boeing (Michigan Tech University) started the game on the power play and Brian Bowen (University of Vermont) scored to end the night for goaltender Hayden Lavigne (University of Michigan) just 11:12 into the game. Logan Halladay (University of Minnesota) stepped in, stopping 8-8 in the first and finishing the game with 27 saves.
The Fighting Saints would open the second right were they left off the first. 59 seconds in Nate Sucese (Penn State University) tallied on a 3-on-1 to go up 3-0. Later in the period, Matt Mendelson (Penn State University) would match his future teammate with a goal of his own. The shot from Nikolas Koberstein (University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Montreal Canadiens) was deflected by the Thunder’s leading scorer and put his team on the board. Sucese potted his second of the night on the power play and would end the game with an empty netter to seal the hat trick.
A combined 72 minutes of penalty time was called in the game with a majority coming from an altercation in the second period. At 16:41, Bloomington’s Shane Bednard (Bowling Green State University) and Jeremy Davies (Northeastern University) were given 10-minute misconducts in addition to roughing calls to match Keegan Ford and Shane Kavanagh who also earned roughing and misconduct calls. Bloomington was 1-4 on the power play, while Dubuque continues to roll on the man advantage at 2-2.
Bloomington would score a power play goal in the third to cut the lead in half. Jason Kalinowski (University of New Hampshire) scored his first of the season off a shot from Max Gottlieb (Brown University) at 3:45 of the final period. Bloomington would have their third goal in three games taken off the board when a hand pass was ruled in front of the net, negating Logan Lambdin’s eighth of the season. The Thunder would pepper goaltender Jacob Nehama with ten shots in the period but could not beat the netminder again in the game. Nehama earned his 20th win of the year with 30 saves.
Bloomington returns to the U.S. Cellular Coliseum Sunday to face the Chicago Steel at 3 pm.
