Central Hockey League: Rival Brahmas crush Jackalopes

Odessa Jackalopes coach Paul Gillis saw it coming and Thursday night his team made that vision materialize.

Watching the Texas Brahmas win battles all over the ice, Gillis wasn’t surprised that the Jackalopes finished on the wrong end of a 7-3 score at the Ector County Coliseum.

The loss snaps an eight-game winning streak for Odessa (11-2-1), which will travel to face Laredo at 7:30 tonight in the second of a three-games-in-three-nights stretch.

“They’ve had things a little too easy the last two weeks,” Gillis said of his players. “Too much success and they forgot about the reasons for that success.

“We got outworked and Texas won all the little battles all over the ice tonight. Their first two goals were a bit unlucky, but you earn your luck by working hard and they did that tonight.”

Jordan Cameron and Matt Burto each scored two goals and added one assist apiece to pace the Brahmas (6-6-2) offense. Grant Jacobsen, Jason Deitsch and James Hiebert also tallied for Texas in the first meeting between the teams since Game 7 of the 2008 Southern Conference Finals.

So dominant were the Brahmas that they out-shot Odessa 41-18 for the game, including a 22-4 margin in the third period.

Alex Dunn, Paul Kelly and Kory Karlander all scored for the Jackalopes, with Juha Toivonen, Dunn, Dominic Leveille, Mike Ramsay, Mike Lesperance and Karlander all adding one assist to the mix.

Texas, the defending Central Hockey League champion, jumped out to a two-goal lead after 20 minutes, the first time the Jackalopes had trailed in eight periods of hockey.

Deitsch started the scoring when he was credited with the goal after a shot by Elia Godoy was stopped by Toivonen and then bounced of Dietsch’s body into the net just 5:27 into the game.

Just before the end of the first period, Hiebert extended the Brahmas’ lead with a redirect at the left post on a cross-ice feed from Anders Strome in the right circle with 3:40 left before the first break.

It was 3-0 in the third period when the Jackalopes looked like they were going to get back into the game when Dunn, at the 14:25 mark, and then Karlander, with 2:08 left in the second period, scored power-play goals to cut the lead to one (3-2).

Texas, however, came right back with a pair of goals of its own by Cameron and Burto at 18:06 and 18:57, respectively, to put the game away.

“We had gotten some momentum going for about five minutes in the second period and I thought we were going to get back in the game,” Gillis said. “The shift right after a goal is very important and we got caught pinching and the puck went to the middle and was in the net.

“Then, on the next shift, we have control of the puck and don’t skate it out, turn it over and it’s in our net and we’re right back where we started.”