Chances created, woes continued in Phantoms’ seventh loss in a row

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Phantoms took more shots, laid more hits and created more scoring chances than visiting Waterloo Black Hawks Sunday afternoon at the Covelli Centre. But the game of hockey comes down to making something with chances, and the Black Hawks capitalized on virtually every chance it got to hand the Phantoms an 8-3 defeat.

Markus McCrea, Austin Cangelosi and Alexander Dahl all scored for Youngstown (4-7-0, 8 points), which after opening the season with four wins, dropped its seventh consecutive contest.

Between the pipes Sean Romeo made 30 saves and played a much better game than the box score indicated.

“Tonight was one of those games where it seemed like the harder we tried – the more shots we blocked and the more physical we got – it just got worse,” coach Anthony Noreen said. “It was like quicksand.”

Waterloo (9-1-0) took a 3-0 lead by the 13:46 mark of the first period.

“That’s life. Sometimes you work hard and do things the right way and it doesn’t work out,” Noreen said. “That’s just the way it’s going right now. We’ve got 53 games left. We’re not going to hang our heads on a loss in October.”