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Day of rest awakened by KO
The SteelHounds won the battle, but lost the war against the Laredo Bucks.
YOUNGSTOWN — Playoff fever boiled over into major fisticuffs in Sunday’s series finale between the Youngstown SteelHounds and the Laredo Bucks at the Chevrolet Centre.
After defeating the Bucks on Friday and Saturday, the SteelHounds lost 3-1, but Milan Maslonka delivered a knockout punch to highlight a fighting frenzy midway through a wild second period.
The SteelHounds (36-20-5, 77 points) remain in fourth place in the Central Hockey League’s extremely tight Northern Conference after picking up four out of six points over the weekend
“Any time you can get four of six points in a series against one of the top teams is a good weekend,” SteelHounds coach Kevin Kaminski said. “But we had a chance to have a great weekend and put ourselves in a good spot.
“We don’t make things easy on ourselves.”
Youngstown closes the season beginning Wednesday with a three-game series here against Northwest Division leader Colorado (37-18-6, 80 points). The Eagles need two points to clinch their division over Rocky Mountain Rage (75 points).
The SteelHounds trail the Texas Brahmas by three points for third place but lead the Mississippi RiverKings by one point.
A two-goal blitz by Laredo early in the second period and a questionable hit by one of the Bucks incited a melee.
“Whatever sparked that [melee], it looked like a cheap shot, but then things got going,” Kaminski said.
Six players were ejected and both starting goalies were pulled after they became involved in the fighting.
Ejected were Youngstown’s Steve Birnstill, Mark Odut and Jeff Genovy and Laredo’s Gord Burnett, Derek Legault and Matt Summers.
Two other fighting majors were assessed in a fight that took more than 10 minutes to sort out.
Four minutes later, Laredo’s Alex Penner challenged Youngstown’s Maslonka to a fight at center ice after a faceoff and the SteelHounds defenseman dropped him with a knockout punch.
“We needed that,” Kaminski said. “It gave us a little spark and we got a goal and had some unbelievable chances in the third period.
“We didn’t capitalize on them.”
The SteelHounds tried to rally with just 12 players available the rest of the second period and 13 for much of the final 20 minutes.
“It was tough on the guys but there is a lot of character in this lockerroom,” Kaminski said. “We showed it on the ice. Guys came back to the bench winded.
“The effort was there.”
Youngstown fell behind early when Legualt poked in the puck past the left side of goalie Kevin Beech.
In the second period, Chris Stanley scored on an unassisted powerplay goal and Alex Goupil tallied on a wrist shot with 11:30 left in the period.
“We gave them their three goals tonight,” Kaminski said. “We had too many turnovers. We didn’t do what we needed to do with the puck early in the game in our zone.”
Kaminski said he expects his team to be ready for the Colorado series.
“We’ve got to come out here next week with the same intensity, same passion, same work ethic that we showed this weekend,” Kaminski said. “This is the time of year that you have to sacrifice your body to do whatever it takes to make the playoffs.”