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.
Evan Barlow and Tyler Spurgeon scored three goals each to propel the Idaho Steelheads (27-11-2) to an 8-5 win over the Las Vegas Wranglers (17-20-4) at Qwest Arena. Two of the Steelheads’ eight goals were of the shorthanded variety.
The Steelheads took a 2-0 lead before nine minutes could tick off the clock. With the Steelheads shorthanded at 2:38, Tyler Spurgeon’s pass for Michael Olson in the slot deflected off the stick of the Wranglers’ Ned Lukacevic and into the net for Spurgeon’s sixth of the season. Olson registered an assist on the play.
At 8:33, Evan Barlow fired a wrist shot from the right circle to beat Ouzas for a power play goal; an assist was given to Brendan Milnamow on Barlow’s 16th of the season.
In the second half of the first period, the Wranglers capitalized three times, as Jeff Hazelwood, Alex Bourret, and Matt Kang all managed to beat Idaho’s Richard Bachman, who faced just seven shots in the opening period.
The second period was another back-and-forth affair, as Spurgeon tied the game for the Steelheads at 1:49; he swept home a rebound for his seventh of the season. Mark Derlago and Evan Barlow notched the assists on Spurgeon’s goal.
At 13:01, Barlow put the Steelheads ahead with his 17th of the season; Derlago and Cody Lampl tallied the assists. However, the Wranglers would counter with a pair of their own to regain the lead. First, Shay Stephenson scored at 14:46, and just 13 seconds later the Wranglers’ lone All-Star Adam Miller gave Las Vegas the 5-4 advantage.
At 17:45, Michael Olson one-timed an errant pass into the Wranglers’ net to tie the game for Idaho. The goal was Olson’s second, assisted by Brendan Milnamow and Mark McCutcheon.
The Steelheads controlled the third period, as they tacked on three insurance markers. Mark McCutcheon scored an unassisted shorthanded goal, Tyler Spurgeon completed the hat trick with his eighth of the season, and Evan Barlow found the empty net with a less than a second left to complete a hat trick of his own.
Richard Bachman started for Idaho, but was pulled after one period; he surrendered three goals on seven shots. Rejean Beauchemin finished the game, stopping 12 of 14 shots for the win; he is now 14-6-1 on the season. Michael Ouzas stopped 37 of 44 shots in the loss for the Wranglers. He is 14-16-3.
The Steelheads’ next game is Friday night in Bakersfield. Idaho returns home February 10th to take on the Utah Grizzlies.