Corpus Christi, Texas – It was a bounce-back night of sorts for the Corpus Christi IceRays.
A night after a lopsided 10-1 loss Friday and trailing 1-0 in the third period, the IceRays responded with three third-period goals to pull out a 3-1 win over the Shreveport Mudbugs Saturday night at the Georges Pond Hirsch Coliseum in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Michael Valdez, Cody Kempf and Pierson Sobush each netted goals for the IceRays, who did something they hadn’t done before in franchise history, securing a winning record in Shreveport, where they are 3-2-1.
Ryan Burke scored for Shreveport.
“A really big win,” IceRays Head Coach Sylvain Cloutier said. “It was a completely different team tonight. They played that full 60. Still a lot of work to do.”
Shreveport outshot the IceRays 26-20, including 13-4 in the second period, but the IceRays persevered in the third where the two teams were even at 7-7.
Neither team could score on the power play with Corpus Christi going 0-for-1 and Shreveport 0-for-3 for Corpus Christi on the power play.
The Mudbugs are 9-3-0, 1SOL against Corpus Christi, but saw their four-game win streak over the IceRays come to an end, while the Corpus Christi improved to 4-8-1, 1SOL in 13 games this season after going 0-8 a year ago.
Corpus Christi is now 3-6-0, 0SOL in its last eight contests and 6-8-0, 1SOL in its last 15 games.
Overall, the IceRays are now 15-26-1, 3SOL for 34 points, in eighth place in the NAHL South Division, eight points behind the Odessa Jackalopes for seventh, and 17 points behind the Oklahoma Warriors for sixth.
Shreveport is in second place in points with a record of 32-12-0, 2SOL for 66 points, five points ahead of the El Paso Rhinos, and eight points behind the division-leading Lone Star Brahmas.
After neither team could get a goal in the first period, Burke put Shreveport on the board with his 20th goal of the season at 1:31 of the second period and the Mudbugs led 1-0 heading into the final frame.
Valdez tied the game at 1-1 with his fourth goal of the year from Zakhar Polshakov and Griffin Zaske at 8:51 of the third period.
Kempf gave the IceRays the lead on his fifth goal from Luca Fasciano and Wolfgang Govedaris at 13:23.
Sobush secured the victory with an empty-net goal from Polshakov and Valdez at 19:39.
The whole team stepped up tonight,” Cloutier said.
The IceRays will conclude their road trip Monday, January 19 at the Lone Star Brahmas at 1 p.m. CST.
You can watch the game on nahltv.com.
For more information, visit goicerays.com.
