Matchup: Las Vegas Wranglers at Idaho Steelheads, Friday / Saturday / Sunday, January 22 – 24. Qwest Arena. Game time each night is 7 PM.
Nice to meet you: Even though we’re well into the second half of the ECHL season, the Steelheads and Wranglers have played exactly once this season – a Wrangler victory in Las Vegas on December 29. The Steelheads go back to Las Vegas to start February and then the two teams are done for the season unless they cross paths in the postseason.
Derlago getting’ going: Since the calendar has flipped to 2010, explosive forward Mark Derlago has gotten hot. In the five games leading up to the ECHL All Star break, Derlago had three goals and six assists, which catapulted him into second on the team in scoring with 29 points (12 goals, 17 assists) despite missing 11 games due to an American Hockey League call-up and his brother’s wedding back home in Manitoba.
Iron Men: Only three Steelheads appeared in all 37 games prior to the all-star break and two of them, forward John Swanson and defenseman Brendan Milnamow, earned all-star invitations. The third, defenseman Weston Tardy, has 14 points from the blue line this season.
Mark Derlago put the Idaho Steelheads (26-11-2) on the board midway through the first period, and Idaho never looked back in earning victory number one over the Las Vegas Wranglers (17-19-4) with a 4-1 win in front of a sellout crowd of 5,087 at Qwest Arena. Derlago is now riding a five-game point streak, during which he has five goals and seven assists. The capacity crowd was the Steelheads’ second in as many nights.
Mark Derlago put the Steelheads on the board first when he gathered a rebound from and Evan Barlow shot and wrapped the puck around the net to beat Las Vegas goalie Michael Ouzas for the first period’s only goal.
Derlago’s goal stood as the game’s lone marker until the 41-second mark of the third period when Tyler Spurgeon redirected home a Weston Tardy point shot for his fifth of the season to make the score 2-0. Derlago also picked up an assist on Spurgeon’s first goal since returning to the Steelheads from the American Hockey League’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
Las Vegas countered when Shay Stephenson hit home a rebound from a Jason Krischuk shot at 0:41 of the third period, but that would be the only puck to slide by Idaho’s Richard Bachman tonight.
Derlago regained the two-goal advantage for Idaho with his 14th of the season at 10:53 of the third period when he redirected home another Weston Tardy point shot to make the score 3-1.
Brandan Kushniruk added the last bit of insurance when he completed a back-and-forth passing play with Matt McKnight, and fired a one-timer by Ouzas from the right side of the slot. Cody Lampl also assisted on the goal that gave Idaho a 4-1 lead, which would eventually be the final score.
Richard Bachman, after suffering the loss last night despite inheriting a 3-0 deficit, earned the win tonight by stopping 16 of 17 shots; he is now 12-5-1. Ouzas stopped 34 of 38, and fell below .500 with the loss; he is now 14-15-3 for the Wranglers.
The three-game weekend series concludes tomorrow night at Qwest Arena. The Steelheads and Wranglers will do battle beginning at 7PM.