A regulation hockey game lasts 60 minutes.
Yet it took all of 22 seconds Saturday to turn it completely on edge — ultimately sending the Roadrunners to their first non-shootout loss of the season.
The Roadrunners fell, 5-3, to the Rockford IceHogs at the Tucson Arena, snapping a streak of six consecutive games with a point to start the still young 2018-19 season.
Tucson was leading 3-1 approaching the second period’s mid-point when Rockford flipped the script with a pair of power-play goals 22 seconds apart to knot things up — and then kept rolling. Rockford pulled away in the third to avenge an overtime loss to its Tucson hosts a night earlier.
“I don’t think we did the right stuff after that. I think after those two goals everybody was pretty down,” said Tucson forward Jens Looke, who opened Saturday’s scoring about six minutes in with his third goal in just three outings this season. Looke scored twice in the season opener but left that game with an upper body injury, only to return to the lineup for this weekend’s series.
“Five on five, I think we played really good. We just have to stay disciplined and stay out of penalties.”
Roadrunners right wing Conor Garland takes a high stick to the face from Rockford left wing Matheson Iacopelli in Saturday’s first period. The move earned Iacopelli a minor penalty.
Looke’s goal was technically unassisted, although the entire sequence was set up by a long pass from Tucson goaltender Hunter Miska up the right side to the second blueline. The Roadrunners worked it into the zone before Looke took dead aim, rifling one from straight on in the slot past Rockford goalie Collin Delia.
Tucson’s other goals on the night came from Lane Pederson (with assists from Tyler Steenbergen and Hudson Fasching), and Trevor Murphy. Pederson’s first goal of the season gave Tucson a 2-1 lead heading into the second period, while Murphy scored less than five minutes into that middle frame — his second of the year — to set the Roadrunners up with the 3-1 lead they couldn’t hold on to.
“I there were key moments in the game we could have come back, found our way back into the game and we didn’t do it,” Tucson head coach Jay Varady said. “I think we let frustrations set in a little bit.”
It was Miska’s turn in net Saturday, as he and teammate Adin Hill have alternated every game in goal so far this season for the Roadrunners. Miska, who stopped a career-high 42 of 44 shots in his first outing this season, before following that up with 34 saves on 36 shots the next-go round, wasn’t peppered in nearly the same capacity against Rockford. He stopped 22 of 26 Saturday night.
In front of an announced crowd of 4,411, Rockford’s scoring came off the sticks of Luke Johnson in the first and Jordan Schroeder and Anthony Louis in the second, before Terry Broadhurst gave the IceHogs the lead for good just 1:22 into the third. Tyler Sikura punctuated it with an empty netter late.
The Roadrunners’ next four games take place on the road. They’ll travel to Ontario, California for one and San Diego for one, and then face the Colorado Eagles for a pair before returning home Nov. 7 against San Diego.
