Milwaukee, WI – After high hopes of finishing out the New Year with a win, the Milwaukee Admirals fell short against the Lake Erie Monsters in a 5-4 overtime loss on Tuesday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
Looking back at the game Milwaukee’s biggest downfall was their power play or lack there of. They were 0-4 on Tuesday evening, but before that match up the Admirals are 0-31 in their last 8 home games.
Despite the loss, Milwaukee head coach Dean Evason and the Admirals are using this game as a lesson and motivation for the rest of the season. Evason was very pleased with the team’s performance even though the Monsters had a 3-0 lead at the end of the first.
Evason seemed to bring his optimistic behavior with him into the locker room during the first intermission.
“I told them, we’re okay, we’re okay,” Evason said. “Maybe not on the score board, but we’re okay.”
Evason said they switched a few structural things around but made sure the players went back on the ice with a good mindset.
The Admirals seemed to keep that mindset for the rest of the game when they added two goals to the board in the first 8 minutes of the second period. But, they didn’t stop there. The Admirals came back to tie up the game in the third, but then allowed the Monsters to catch a one goal lead bringing the game 4-3 with only 2:14 left in the third. The Admirals then pulled goalie Marek Mazanec to gain an extra attacker and Pontus Aberg tied it up once again with just under a minute to go. However, that didn’t last long when Mitchell Hill scored the game winning goal just two minutes into overtime.
Although Milwaukee lost the battle with Lake Erie, Evason was proud that the team was able to capture a point in the end.
“It’s a good point for us,” Evason said. “Clearly everybody looks at the negative, and we lost the hockey game. We’ll be positive that we came back from three, gave up a bad goal, and we pushed to get another one.”
Playing catch up didn’t seem to be a problem for the Admirals in this game. They came out of the locker room after the first with what seemed to be a little more hunger for the puck. Viktor Stalberg seemed to help keep the ambitions high when he put the first goal on the board and he didn’t just stop there. Stalberg also tallied on two assists to finish off the game. The Predators reassigned Stalberg to the Admirals after missing seven weeks due to a knee injury in his fourth game of a conditioning assignment with Milwaukee.
Aberg seemed to feed off of the positive vibes tacking on two goals to tie the score at 3-3 and 4-4. The rookie sat for Monday night’s game against the Iowa Wild, allowing him to rethink his playing motives and really prove to the team that he’s a great asset. Evason stated that they sat Aberg in hopes to get a response out of him and it seems as if he responded exactly how they hoped he would.
“I didn’t play yesterday,” Aberg said. “So I wanted to go out there and show them what I got.”
The Sweden native is responsible for 13 goals and 6 assists this season so far.
The Admirals are on their longest home losing streak since 1999, and after a road game on Friday against the Grand Rapid Griffins they return to Milwaukee to face the Hamilton Bulldogs
