By Brian Tosti
BLOOMINGTON – The first period was a prediction of how the Bloomington Thunder’s win over the Lincoln Stars would go. The team turned on an offensive surge against the Stars right from the get go, turning in a 6-2 win to take wins in eight of their last nine games. Bloomington (32-18-3-1) picked up two more points toward the Clark Cup Playoffs. Lincoln (31-20-1-0) fell to second place in the Western Conference, snapping a three game win streak in the loss.
Logan Lambdin (Michigan State University) was the number one star of the game on the score sheet and helped the Thunder to the win. He began the scoring on a power play goal under three minutes into the first. Off of a first period season high of 18 shots, Lambdin put the Thunder up in an unconventional way. Jeremy Davies (Northeastern University) sent the puck below the goal line to the Michigan State commit who made his way to the net. Shooting the puck from below the goal line, Lambdin banked it off goaltender Patrick Virtanen to open the scoring. Virtanen suffers the loss to the Thunder making 27 saves in the game.
Lambdin would come back in the second to tally his 26th of the season. Less than two minutes after Lambdin fed Jake Slaker (St. Lawrence University) in the slot, he would take one himself. Down the right wing into the zone, he cut to the front of the net to tuck it in with less than two minutes left in the second period.
Seven minutes into the first period, the Thunder took the 2-0 advantage into the break. Steven Merl (University of Michigan) fired a shot off the shoulder of Virtanen and coming in for the rebound was the Thunder’s top scoring rookie. Vlad Dzhioshvili (Cornell University) fired the puck into the net with his sixth goal of the season.
In the second the Stars were able to cut the lead in half when Biagio Lerario (Northeastern University) found a loose puck in the slot and put it off the post on the right side of the net. Both Tanner Laczynski (Ohio State University) and Ryan Poehling (St. Cloud State University) earned assists on the 14th of the season for the future Husky.
Slaker’s goal in the second gave him four goals in his last five games. The feed from below the goal line was fed to the front for Slaker to tap it in. The scoring charge carried over into the third period. Wyatt Kalynuk (Western Michigan University) fired the puck from the left point and it carried into the net. Kalynuk’s third of the season came against his former team to take a 5-1 lead with over 17 minutes to play in the game.
Logan Halladay (Merrimack College) picked up the win for the Thunder off of 28 saves in the game. He also came away with one of the biggest saves of the season in the second on Ludvig Hoff (University of North Dakota).
The Stars added one more on a five-minute major power play, but it was too little too late. The goal by Mike Gillespie was his fourth of the season to make it 5-2 with six minutes to play.
All over the ice was Blake Gober (Penn State University) who was rewarded for his efforts. In the first period he was stopped on a breakaway, the second hit the post, and the third added an empty net goal. His 11th of the year was shorthanded to seal the win.
The Thunder and Stars battle with more playoff implications on the line. Bloomington took home the first of the weekend series but will drop the puck at 7 p.m. for game two. The Thunder are in fourth place in the Eastern Conference trying to clinch with six games left in the regular season.
