Phantoms vault into second

April 11, 2013 at 12:08a.m.

Staff report

BENSENVILLE, Ill.

Sam Anas scored two goals on Wednesday to lead the Youngstown Phantoms to a 5-2 victory over the Chicago Steel.

The win moves the Phantoms (37-25-0, 74 points) into second place where they are tied with the Green Bay Gamblers (33-23-4, 74 points). The top two teams in the Eastern Conference will have home-ice advantage for next week’s first round of the playoffs.

The Phantoms and Gamblers each have two games remaining before the regular season ends Saturday night. Green Bay owns the tiebreaker thanks to its 5-1 record against the Phantoms.

Anas scored the Phantoms’ first and fifth goals. He has 37 goals, tying him with Dubuque’s Mike Szmatula for the USHL lead.

“Sam is a guy who’s got a knack for scoring goals,” Phantoms head coach Anthony Noreen said. “He did it some last year, but this year he’s really taken it to another level. You can see when his scoring picked up we turned our season around. There’s no doubt about the correlation between those two.”

Mac MacSorley, Luke Stork and Jimmy Mazza also scored goals while goaltender Sean Romeo turned away 27 shots, including 18-of-18 over the final two periods, to pick up his 31st win of the season.

“Everyone contributed and Mac, a guy who hasn’t seen a lot of ice time as of late, gets his number called and gets the game-winner, which is great,” Noreen said.

The Steel (27-31-4, 58 points) took a 2-1 lead into the first intermission, but the Phantoms tied the game just before the seven-minute mark of the second period.

Josh Nenadal left the puck in the left corner for Alexander Dahl, who threaded it to Stork parked at the top of a faceoff circle. Stork fired a one-timer past Chicago goaltender Chris Nell’s outstretched glove for his 12th of the season.

MacSorley put Youngstown in front with 6:20 remaining in the second period. First-year defenseman Kyle Mackey intercepted a Chicago clearing attempt at the left point and tapped a pass to MacSorley at the right circle. The 16-year-old fired a wrist shot inside the far post for his first goal since Oct. 12.

“He’s gone out there in practice and played the right way and done everything we’ve asked of all of our guys,” Noreen said. “For him to go out and score a goal was a huge boost to our team, and our guys really fed off it.

“That was excited as I’ve seen our guys for somebody else to score in a long time. He’s earned it.”

Mazza gave the Phantoms a two-goal cushion three minutes into the third period with a shot that deflected off a Steel defenseman and squirted past Nell.

The Phantoms and Steel play Friday and Saturday nights at the Covelli Centre.