Ice Dogs lead series 2-1 after Game 3 win on Tuesday

April 9, 2014

Fairbanks Ice Dogs 5 @ Kenai River Brown Bears 2 (Fairbanks leads best of five series, 2-1) - The Fairbanks Ice Dogs put the Kenai River Brown Bears on the brink of elimination in their Midwest Semi-Final series with a 5-2 victory Tuesday at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex in Kenai River. The Ice Dogs now lead the best-of-five, first-round series 2-1. Game 4 is tonight at 7pm in Kenai River.

 

One of the keys to victory in Tuesday’s game and during the season series in general, was Fairbanks scoring early and often. Defenseman With 7:46 left in the first, defenseman Wyatt Ege, floated a shot from the blue line through traffic and into the net past Brown Bears goalie Zach Quinn. Just :20 seconds later the Bears committed a turnover in their own zone and Yannick Vedel pounced on it for a 2-0 game. The Brown Bears quickly called timeout and responded immediately as Nathan Colwell converted a Ben Campbell rebound from the slot for a 2-1 game with 2:44 left in the first. However, Fairbanks would answer before the end of the period on a power play with some nice tic-tac-toe passing from Duggie Lagrone to Ethan Somoza to Ross Olsson made it 3-1 with 34 seconds left in the first period.

 

In the second period, the Bears stayed the course and some pretty passing between Albin Karlsson, Judd Loewenstein and Sebastian Fuchs led to a Karlsson tally. The lone goal of the second made it a 3-2 game headed to the third.

 

But in the 3rd period, the Ice Dogs would take all of the air out of any Brown Bears momentum just :48 seconds into the period as Todd Burgess scored a power play goal to make it 4-2. 12 minutes later, Fairbanks forward Johnny Mueller made it 5-2 with Lagrone picking up his second assist of the game.

 

Quinn made 27 saves in the loss, while Kevin Aldridge picked up the win making 22 saves.