By Dave Hart
LocalSportsJournal.com
MUSKEGON – The Muskegon Lumberjacks made it a point to get off to a fast start and they surely did that on Saturday night.
The Jacks jumped out to a 2-0 lead after the first period, then maintained their lead to a 5-2 win over the third-place Waterloo Black Hawks at Trinity Health Arena.
Muskegon snapped its short two-game losing streak and improved to 29-17-2 on the season.
The Lumberjacks currently have 60 points in the standings, good for third place in the USHL’s Eastern Conference standings.
Muskegon will go on the road to start a three-game road trip in Ohio against the fourth-place Youngstown Phantoms. The first game will be at 7:05 p.m. Friday night.
The Jacks are currently just one point behind second-place Green Bay for the second, and final, spot for a first-round bye in the USHL Clark Cup playoffs.
“It was something we were focused on and you don’t know what game it’s going to click and for us we put it into the hands of our leaders,” said Lumberjacks head coach Parker Burgess. “We didn’t want to beat a dead horse, so we told the leadership group that this is their team and it’s up to them to make sure we are ready.”
Muskegon was paced by Joe Connor, who recorded another three-goal hat trick.
“He means so much to our team,” Burgess said. “He plays hard and competes with a chip on his shoulder and we are lucky to have him.”
The Lumberjacks drew first blood with just 1 second remaining on their first power play of the game.
Connor scored his 21st goal of the season on a backhanded shot to give Muskegon a 1-0 lead near the midpoint of the first period.
The Lumberjacks quickly increased their lead to 2-0 just 32 seconds later as Ty Henricks snuck past the Waterloo defense and scored his 15th goal of the season.
It looked like the Black Hawks were going to score their first goal of the contest just before the period ended, but it was determined the clock expired before the puck crossed the goal line.
Muskegon completed its best opening period in weeks and led 2-0.
Connor scored his second of the game, and 22nd of the season, at the 9:21 mark of the second period. Connor took a pass from Matvei Gridin on a 2-on-1 break and buried it in the Waterloo net to make is 3-0.
The second period ended with some excitement as multiple players from each team threw their fists around in a near line brawl that got the crowd pumped up.
Each team was handed 30 minutes worth of penalties with the Lumberjacks given the extra two-minute infraction.
“I thought it was great they engaged right off the bat, and it got the crowd into it,” Burgess said. “You don’t want to see it every night, but every once in a while, when it’s done for the right reasons.”
Connor completed the hat trick when he scored at the 9:31 mark make it 4-0.
The Black Hawks ended the scoring drought with a goal from Landon Nycz at the 13:43 mark.
Waterloo added another goal at the 15:33 mark from Myles Hilman.
The Lumberjacks sealed the victory at 18:55 with an empty-net goal from Gridin.
Lumberjacks’ goaltender Shikhabudtin Gadzhiev earned his 10th win of the season. He stopped 25-of-27 shots.
