Alpena Drops Rangers
January 2, 2009 - North American Hockey League (NAHL)
Marquette Rangers News Release
Marquette - The Marquette Rangers and the Alpena IceDiggers played to a draw through the first 46 minutes and 11 seconds of their game Friday night at Lakeview Arena. Alpena would score twice in the third period, and goaltender Nick Graves was able to make that score stand up for a 2-0 Alpena victory.
"This type of win is everything," said Alpena coach Jack Fritsche. "We felt after losing our last three games that this really was a must-win hockey game for our club, we didn't want to drop a fourth and I thought our guys really responded to the challenge tonight."
"Winning on the road in this league is tough, but I thought our players were motivated to play well; they did, and now the job is to prepare for another tough one tomorrow."
Alpena scored the eventual game-winner at 6:11 of the third period when Erik Peterson scored on his own rebound in front of Rangers goalie Dan Sullivan. For Peterson it added to his team leading totals on the year; 30 points on 13 goals to go with 17 assists. Alpena's Jimmy McCusker scored the IceDiggers other goal at 13:03 of the third.
Sullivan finished the night stopping 33 of Alpena's 35 shots in the night; while Graves was equally as busy stopping all 33 Rangers shots he faced.
Rangers head coach Kenny Miller said he thought his team might start-out flat, but was disappointed that the Rangers never really seemed to get things together during the game.
"We never got going at all tonight," Miller said. "After the break I thought we might start out a bit rusty; you hope you'll get better as you get back into the flow of playing but that never really happened tonight."
"Give them credit, they played a good road game which is tough to do in our league, I just hope our players learned something about being prepared every night because tonight we weren't. They beat us to loose pucks, they won the one-on-one battles and got great goaltending. We'll need to be ready if we're going to split tomorrow night."
The two teams face off Saturday night at 7:30 at Lakeview Arena.
With the win, Alpena is now alone in third place in the North American Hockey League North Division with 36 points, while Marquette (15-15-4) drops into fourth place with 34 points on the season.
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North American Hockey League Stories from January 2, 2009
- RoadRunners Bring in 2009 with a Win at Landon Arena - Topeka Pilots
- Alpena Drops Rangers - Marquette Rangers
- Phantoms and North Stars Do OT Again - Mahoning Valley Phantoms
- U.S. Nat'l U18 Team Falls to Maine, 7-3 - U.S. National Team
- U.S. Falls To Slovakia In World Juniors - U.S. National Team
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