Despite early exit, Phantoms have no regrets

April 23, 2015 at 12:10a.m.

Despite an early playoff exit, the Youngstown Phantoms are left without any regrets

Sometimes hockey isn’t about Xs and Os.

Occasionally it’s not even about shuffling lines or defensive pairings. Often it simply comes down to the bounce of the puck.

That was the attitude Wednesday afternoon at the Covelli Centre as the Youngstown Phantoms held their final team meeting and cleaned out their lockers, less than 48 hours after their season ended in a Game 4 loss to the Muskegon Lumberjacks in the first round of the USHL Clark Cup Playoffs.

“It just came down to a couple bounces that we just didn’t really get,” co-captain Josh Nenadal said. “You saw in the overtime game and the double overtime game, the goals scored were the greasy, hard-working goals.

“You gotta give it up to their goalie, [Eric] Schierhorn. He was the series. He won that series for them. He was good in net when they needed him to be.”

The Lumberjacks netminder certainly made a difference in the Game 3 double overtime heartbreaker, stopping 44 of 45 shots, but he wasn’t alone in the series. Muskegon, who finished fourth in the Eastern Conference with 74 points, blocked shots, scored timely goals, and was every bit as scrappy as the top-seeded Phantoms (86 points) in the best-of-five series.

“I mean it’s obviously disappointing,” forward Ryan Lomberg said. “I feel like everyone here felt like we were destined for a little more, but you gotta give credit to Muskegon.

“We didn’t, by any means, play our worst hockey. They beat us three out of four, which you know didn’t happen all year. You gotta give credit to them. They brought it, they did what it took and they won.”

Youngstown’s most productive line of the series was its top line of Kyle Connor, Tyler Sheehy and Lomberg. Connor scored three goals and an assist, Sheehy had three assists and Lomberg added a goal and an assist. However they were a combined minus-10 for the series, including a minus-6 in the series clinching Game 4 at Muskegon.

“I think coach kinda said it best,” Sheehy said. “He said, ‘Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,’ because I mean we hit a ton of posts. Their bounces would go in. We wouldn’t always get the best call and things just weren’t really going our way.

“I don’t think that we played bad games or anything like that.”

Game 1 may have been their most out-of-character performance. The Phantoms allowed five goals, their highest output in two months, and they took six penalties that totaled 26 penalty minutes — more than double the amount of the Lumberjacks. Even so, they still had a chance in overtime to win and return home with a series lead.

“The first game I thought that we could’ve had a better game and we all understood that,” Nenadal said of the 5-4 loss. “I just think that there were a lot of younger guys who had never really experienced playoff hockey yet. But I thought our bounceback ability in Games 2, 3, and 4 were just remarkable. The hockey we were playing was playoff hockey all the way. Like I said, we just didn’t get those bounces and that happens sometimes.

“I mean there’s a reason the team that wins the regular season doesn’t win the cup every year.”

With the Phantoms early playoff exit, six of the last 10 Anderson Cup winners failed to win the Clark Cup that season. On Wednesday, head coach Anthony Noreen made sure that didn’t take away from a franchise-record 40-win season.

“We weren’t able to get it to go and for whatever reason the puck just wouldn’t go in to the net,” Noreen said. “That’s life. That happens.

“Again, credit to Muskegon, but our guys left it on the ice. And as a coach, that’s all you could ask for.”