Corpus Christi, Texas – The Corpus Christi IceRays felt pretty good about themselves early in the contest after taking a 2-1 lead after one period of play.
Unfortunately, the feeling good stage turned into a uphill climb as the IceRays fell to the Shreveport Mudbugs 7-2 Friday night at the American Bank Center.
Corpus Christi is now 8-13-1, 2 SOL for 19 points and still sitting in eighth place in the NAHL South Division, two points ahead of Colorado.
Shreveport moved into second place in the South at 15-7-0 1 SOL for 31 points.
Andrew Hayek and Will Reardon scored the goals for the IceRays.
Kyan Haldenby, Ryan Burke, Lucas Deeb, Wil Murphy, Hayden Nichol and Andrej Paricka all scored goals for Shreveport.
The Mudbugs outshot the IceRays 34-24.
“We only created 24 shots,” IceRays head coach Sylvain Cloutier said. “We have to rebound tomorrow.”
It looked like a rebound wasn’t necessary early for Corpus Christi.
Haldenby gave Shreveport the lead at 7:58 of the first period with his seventh goal of the year.
Corpus Christi then responded with goals from Hayek, his first of the season, at 16:09 to tie things up off assists from Anthony Cafarelli and Zakhar Polshakov.
The IceRays took a 2-1 with less than a minute to play at 19:24 of the opening period and were ahead 2-1 after one period.
But Shreveport answered with six goals over the final two periods to pull away.
Burke scored at 3:58 to tie the game with his 10th goal of the season at 3:58 of the second period.
Deeb put Shreveport on top to stay with his eighth goal of the year at 18:58, and Murphy collected his third, unassisted less than a minute later at 19:47 and the Mudbugs led 4-2 after two periods.
Nichol scored his tenth of the season just eight seconds into the third period.
Paricka added his third at 5:06 and Fleet closed out the scoring with his second goal of the season at 6:20.
The IceRays and Mudbugs will continue their three-game series
Saturday night at 7:05 p.m. CST with Sunday afternoon’s contest set for 4 p.m. CST.
You can watch the games on NAHLTV.com and can also catch them on Brewster Street Radio.
For more info on the IceRays visit goicerays.com.
