Returning home for two straight games didn’t do anything to alleviate the offensive woes of the Kalamazoo Wings, but they did snap a couple of dubious streaks during last week’s slate of games. Despite some solid goaltending from both Joel Martin and Nick Riopel they were only able to salvage one win from the three games.
On Friday, the Wings, who hadn’t scored a goal in two games, hosted the Cincinnati Cyclones, a team with a four-game winning streak. By the end of the night, both streaks were intact as the Cyclones won 3-0 in Kalamazoo.
Goaltender Michael Houser stopped all 23 shots he faced from the Wings. Riopel was in net for the home team and made 21 saves on 23 shots (Andrew Yogan added an empty netter in the dying minutes of the game). Wings forward Brian Hart, who had been placed on reserve earlier in the week, returned and fired a team-high 5 shots.
With 194:55 minutes of scoreless offense under their belt, the Wings hoped to turn things around on Saturday against the Quad City Mallards. It would take until the second period, but Anthony Camara would finally find the back of the net off of a feed from Tyler Shattock. With that goal the scoreless streak would end at 219:48 minutes.
The Wings had been undefeated on the season when scoring the first score. Unfortunately, Joel Martin and the rest of the team were unable to keep that streak alive as Quad City scored twice in the third to win the game and sent Kalamazoo to its fourth straight loss (but at least they scored!).
After a couple of days off, the Wings traveled to Cincinnati for an early morning game against the Cyclones on Tuesday. They were down early as Cincinnati scored 4 minutes into the game. After that it was all Kalamazoo as Riopel backstopped them to a 3-1 victory. Charlie Vasturo scored his team-leading 4th goal to tie the game in the second.
In the third, Tanner Sorenson scored his first goal of the season to give them the lead as Dajon Mingo picked up his team-high 8th assist on the goal. Justin Taylor added an empty-netter to complete the scoring.
With the win, the Wings evened their record at 6-6-0-1. They now trail the Central Division leading Tulsa Oilers by 9 points. Kalamazoo will be back on the ice in Toledo on Friday.
