The Kenai River Brown Bears lost 3-2 in a shootout to the Anchorage Wolverines on Friday in North American Hockey League play at Ben Boeke Ice Arena in Anchorage.
Kenai River head coach Taylor Shaw said it was nice to get a point on the road.
“Obviously, we’d like to be greedy and get the extra one,” he said. “We’ll take the one and now we’re in our barn tomorrow night. The ball’s in our court.”
The Brown Bears host the Wolverines on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex.
The Wolverines continue to be in great shape to get one of four playoff spots out of the Midwest Division. Anchorage is 29-13-2-2, good for 62 points. The Wisconsin Windigo lead the division with 68 points, while the Minnesota Wilderness are in fourth at 56 and the Chippewa (Wisconsin) Steel are in fifth at 49 points.
Kenai River is last in the division at 13-30-4-1.
Anchorage also is in firm control of the Club 49 Cup. The Wolverines have 29 points, while the Bears have 11 and the Fairbanks Ice Dogs have 10.
Romulus Riego De Dios had the Wolverines up 1-0 after a period Friday.
Kenai River tied it with 13:35 left in the second period when Samuel Sisik scored on the power play, assisted by Kotaro Tsutsumi and Riley Mullens.
About five minutes later, Anchorage was up 2-1 on a strike by Arvega Hovsepyan.
“I thought we played well,” Shaw said. “We killed off a bunch of penalties and executed on the power play.
“We went into the third period down 2-1 on the road and came up with a point out of it.”
With 11:02 left in the game, Tsutsumi scored on a two-on-one, assisted by Mullens.
Marks Slavinskis-Repe had a big game in net for Kenai River, stopping 47. He also stopped the first three shooters in the shootout, but Kenai River couldn’t score either. Hovsepyan scored in the fourth round to win it for the Wolverines.
Liam Beerman had 21 saves on 23 shots for Anchorage, while Vaughn Makar stopped both shots he saw.
Forward Thomas Gunderson, a tender for the Bears for next season, made his debut and Shaw said Gunderson played really well in his first NAHL game.
