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Stenglein’s late goal helps lift Phantoms past C.R.
By Brandon Judeh
Youngstown
The “Force” was with the Phantoms Saturday night as they defeated Cedar Rapids 3-2 in overtime during Star Wars night at the Covelli Center.
Darth Vader, Princess Leia and some Stormtroopers were in attendance to root the home team on.
The Phantoms had their backs against the wall as the Roughriders’ Landon Smith scored a goal with 9:17 remaining to put his team on top 2-1.
With only 41.7 seconds left in the game, just as the Phantoms were getting ready to pull their goalie for an extra forward, Austin Cangelosi received a pass from Mike Ambrosia and scored a dramatic goal to tie the game at two.
“We did a really good job at shooting the puck, but we didn’t get a whole lot of second-chance shots,” said Phantoms head coach Anthony Noreen. “During the last media timeout we talked about getting more pucks and bodies at the net and the game tying goal was a perfect example of that.”
Going into overtime the Phantoms had newfound momentum and took advantage of it when J. T. Stenglein put the puck in the net to win the game at the 1:36 mark.
“Coach kept telling us to put pucks to the net and if you keep doing things right things will eventually go your way in the end,” said Stenglein. “Him saying that was in the back of my mind the whole game and at the end of the game it worked out.”
Noreen said that going into overtime the team’s plan always remains the same.
“We want to play to win, when we get into overtime we know we are guaranteed a point, but we want to go out there and win it,” he said. “Especially after working hard all game long, the players deserve to get a win rather than a tie.”
The win pushes the Phantoms’ record to 10-5 with a quarter of the season in the books.
Noreen is happy with his team’s performance, but knows there is still plenty of room for improvement.
“I would give our team a B so far,” he said. “I think we have been good, but we have yet to be great and I think our best games are yet to come and that’s our job as a staff to make them great with each practice and game.”
Noreen also says that his team needs to focus on extending leads, whether it is pushing a one-goal lead up to two or scoring a late goal to put the game out of reach.
The game started off slow for both teams as neither scored in the first period, but each team scored a goal in the second period.
The Phantoms struck first when Ryan Belonger scored two minutes and 45 seconds into the period to give his team the first lead. However, six minutes later the Roughriders’ Gerald Mayhew tied the game.
The third period was a weird one for the Phantoms as they had 11 shots on goal, compared to only four for Cedar Rapids, but the Phantoms finally scored on their 11th and final shot of the period.
The Phantoms finished the game with 34 shots on goal, while the Roughriders had 25.