Central Hockey League: Jackalopes eight-game streak halted

Odessa Jackalopes forward Sebastien Thinel summed it up best.

“When you play with fire, eventually you’ll get burned,” he said. “Tonight, we got burned and it was a stupid way to lose.”

In a game that featured six power-play goals, a short-handed goal, a penalty shot and an extra-attacker goal, Arizona’s Chad Hinz scored the most important goal in a shootout to lift the visiting Sundogs to a 6-5 victory in front of 4,112 Saturday night at Ector County Coliseum.

Linus Fagemo had two goals to lead Arizona (14-24-4). It was the first victory for the Sundogs in eight meetings between the clubs this season.

The Jackalopes had an eight-game winning streak halted.

“They have a very good team over there and I thought (Saturday and Friday) we battled them and played well,” Arizona coach Marco Pietroniro. “We’ve been on the wrong end of the one-goal games 15 times, so it’s nice to get a victory.

“Even though they were able to take the lead in the third period, the team never got down and they worked hard to get back in the game.”

Collin Circelli scored a pair of power-play goals to lead the Jackalopes, with Dominic Leveille, Jeff Pierce and Brian Swiniarski also scoring.

Thinel finished with three assists, Pierce added two while Garrett Greunke, Alex Dunn and James Sanford each finished with one for the Jackalopes (33-6-4).

“There wasn’t any rhythm to the game,” Jackalopes coach Paul Gillis said. “They came hard at us and brought a lot of pressure and we turned the puck over in our own zone too many times.”

Arizona’s Reeder opened the scoring in the waning seconds of the first period, taking advantage of a scramble behind the net to work his way unnoticed to the top of the crease. Then, when teammate Jason Visser was able to work the puck free on the rear boards, Reeder was in the perfect spot to take the pass and one-time the puck inside the left post past startled Odessa goaltender Juha Toivonen with 7.1 seconds left before the first break.

Arizona made it 2-0 with 8:37 gone in the second period when Fagemo, taking a feed from Reeder on the left wing, ripped a shot from the slot that ripped the net inside the left post.

That goal, however, seemed to wake up a lethargic Jackalopes team and less than three minutes later, Leveille cut the deficit in half with a wrist shot from the right circle that beat Arizona goaltender Doug Groenestege with 11:10 elapsed in the second 20 minutes.

Swiniarski scored the tying goal with 3:04 left in the second period after being in the right spot — the penalty box — at the right time because when he exited fro his charging penalty, the puck was headed his way and he broke in alone on Groenestege, only to be pulled down from behind.

That resulted in a penalty shot, which Swiniarski converted by coming in through the right circle and forcing the Arizona netminder to the ice before skating past the left post to lift the puck under the crossbar for the goal.

The Sundogs, however, regained the lead with another goal in the final minute, this time on Kyle Hood’s short-handed effort with 45 seconds left in the second period after the Jackalopes had turned the puck over in the Arizona zone on the power play.

The Jackalopes then took a two-goal lead 5-3 on three consecutive power-play goals in the first 6:07 of the third period — two from Circelli and one from Pierce.