LocalSportsJournal.com
The Muskegon Lumberjacks haven’t played a hockey game that counted in the standings for almost eight months due to COVID-19.
The Lumberjacks finally opened their regular season on Friday and showed offensive explosiveness.
Muskegon scored a total of seven goals, which included a string of three tallies in less than three minutes, to defeat the Dubuque Fighting Saints 7-4 at the Mystique Ice Center in Iowa.
The Lumberjacks are 1-0 on the season and will look to get a weekend sweep tomorrow on the road when they face the Green Bay Gamblers. Faceoff is slated for 8:05 p.m. EST.
Dubuque opened the scoring at the 5:31 mark of the first period on a goal from Connor Kurth to give the Fighting Saints a 1-0 lead.
Muskegon tied the game 11:58 into the first period on a goal from Cameron Berg.
The game was tied 1-1 after the first period.
The Lumberjacks exploded offensively during the second period, scoring three unanswered goals 2:36 apart to take a 4-1 lead.
Berg notched his second goal at the 5:36 mark, while Cristophe Tellier (7:22) and Owen Mehlenbacher (8:12) added a goal.
Muskegon increased its lead to 5-1 on a goal from Christophe Fillion at the 15:30 mark of the second period before the Fighting Saints responded with a tally from Daniyal Dzhanieyev with a little over a minute left in the stanza.
The Lumberjacks regained their four-goal advantage at 6-2 with a goal by Danil Gushchin 1:18 into the third period.
Dubuque cut its deficit to 6-4 on goals from Kurth at the 3:48 and 5:16 marks of the third period.
Muskegon closed out the scoring 15:58 into the third period on a goal by Jacob Guevin.
The Lumberjacks outshot Dubuque by a 35-30 margin.
Muskegon goaltender Christian Stoever picked up his first win in net as a Lumberjack, stopping 26 of 30 shots.
