PHOTOS BY: Kai
The Checkers started strong in the first period, with Janne Kuokkanen opening the scoring. They began to lose traction in the second, allowing one goal to be scored on them by German Rubtsov. With a little less than 40 seconds left in the period, Jake Bean scored, bringing the score to 2-1 Checkers.
The third period was when things really began to fall apart. The Checkers took 2 penalties in 6 minutes, and had to handle the penalty kill. They allowed to goals to be scored on them, one by Maksim Sushko and the other by Greg Carey.
The Checkers and Phantoms faced each other two times this weekend, one game resulting in a 3-2 shootout win for the Checkers while the other led to a 3-2 regulation win for the Phantoms. When asked about the difference between Friday night’s win and Saturday’s loss, coach Ryan Warsofsky said “A little bit of everything, really. Just our focus. We didn’t have our jump… If we’re going to be a successful team, there’s no night off and there’s no shifts off.”
When asked about the same thing, defenseman for the Checkers, Roland McKoewn, remarked “Just energy level. I thought [Saturday night] we just kind of sat back and let the game come to us.”
Another issue the Checkers faced was their amount of penalties. The Charlotte team took 7 penalties, adding up to a total of 25 PIM. Warsofsky said “On the PK, it gets to the point where if you’re killing seven or eight, you’re asking for one.” McKoewn had a similar view, stating “When you’re killing that many minutes it’s taxing and the majority of your shifts are in the [defensive] zone. I thought that hurt our momentum tonight.”
This loss brings the Checkers record to 4-4-0, and the Phantoms record to 3-1-3.