A tight battle between opposing goaltenders brought an end to a winning streak for the Stockton Thunder on Saturday night (Feb. 4), but it didn’t prevent the Thunder from collecting another point in the ECHL standings.
Idaho Steelheads goalie Jerry Kuhn out-dueled Stockton’s Olivier Roy to carry the Steelheads to a 2-1 shootout victory over the Thunder before a crowd of 7,032 at Stockton Arena. The decision snapped a five-game winning streak for the Thunder, but the team still has gone six games in a row without suffering a defeat in regulation time. Stockton also is 6-0-1 in its past seven home games and earned a point in defeat by pushing the game to a shootout.
“It was a good stretch for us,” Thunder Coach Matt Thomas said. “It was the type of stretch we needed. No matter what, you need to be finding a way to get points.”
Kuhn finished with 41 saves in earning the victory and Roy was credited with 35 saves in defeat. Just one night earlier, Kuhn lasted less than a period before being chased to the bench as the Thunder skated to a 7-2 victory.
Derek LeBlanc scored Idaho’s only regulation-time goal of Saturday night’s game and also ended it with a goal in the fifth round of the shootout. Andrei Plekhanov also scored in the shootout for Idaho. Chris Doyle accounted for Stockton’s lone goal of regulation time, and Matt Reber had the only shootout goal for the Thunder.
Both goalies were perfect during a scoreless first period, in which Roy turned aside 12 shots and Kuhn stopped nine. LeBlanc snapped the tie when he scored midway through the second period, but the Thunder (23-18-5) got even when Doyle tipped a Mike Little shot past Kuhn with not quite three and a half minutes remaining before the second intermission.
From there, Roy and Kuhn traded saves through the rest of regulation and overtime before the Steelheads (21-20-5) won the shootout. Plekhanov scored in the first round of the shootout, but Reber answered with a goal in the second round and the shootout remained tied at the end of four rounds. After Stockton’s Kevin Baker was stopped by Kuhn in the top of round five, LeBlanc scored to end the game.
“We didn’t play our best game,” said Baker, who had an assist on Doyle's regulation-time goal. “They were there for the taking and we just didn’t take advantage.”
Each team had a chance to win the game on a power play in the closing minutes of regulation time, but neither could generate a goal. Stockton was presented with a manpower advantage when the Steelheads were whistled for having too many men on the ice with not quite four minutes left to play, and Idaho had a power-play opportunity when Thunder defenseman Sebastian Owuya was called for boarding with 1:13 to go. Owuya’s penalty carried into overtime, but the Thunder killed the penalty and ended up outshooting the Steelheads 5-0 during the overtime period.
For the game, each team was 0-for-4 on the power play.
“Our power play let us down and our penalty kill stepped up,” Thomas said. “We just didn’t do enough (overall) to get it done.”
The game wrapped up a stretch in which Stockton played 11 games in a span of just 16 days. The Thunder was an impressive 8-2-1 during the stretch, which included six games against the top two teams in the ECHL (Alaska and Las Vegas), and Thomas admitted that fatigue could have been a factor in Saturday's outcome.
“We just didn’t have it,” Thomas said. “We weren’t connecting on passes or making the heady plays that we have been making.”
The shootout loss left Roy with a record of 10-13-5 and followed a pattern in which he plays well but gets little offensive support.
“He played great,” Thomas said of Roy. “He deserved better. We just didn’t play great as a team.”
The Thunder will get a short break from game action before visiting the Colorado Eagles for back-to-back games beginning Friday (Feb. 10). The Thunder trails the fourth-place Eagles by just two points in the ECHL’s Western Conference standings.
