Telegram Sports
The Newfoundland Growlers saw their ECHL record home-ice win streak come to an end Saturday night at Mile One Centre in St. John’s, where they lost 3-1 to the Maine Mariners.
It was the Growlers’ first loss at Mile One since Oct. 19. After that, Newfoundland (36-12-1) won a league record 19 straight on home ice, setting the new standard with a 5-1 victory over the Mariners Friday night.
Saturday’s rematch was decided in the late stages of the contest.
Second-period goals by Maine’s Michael McNicholas and Newfoundland’s Riley Woods had the score 1-1 entering the last three minutes of the third period when the Growlers’ Aaron Luchuk picked up a delay-of-game penalty (puck over the glass) at 17:40, leading to a Maine power-play that produced what would be the game-winner by Mason Adams-Moisan just over a minute later.
The Mariners (28-21-3) added an empty-net by Greg Chase with 27 seconds remaining in the game.
While it was inevitable the streak would end, and a Growlers letdown might have been expected after having set the record, Newfoundland head coach John Snowden mostly saw it a game where his team was outworked by the Mariners, suggesting the visitors were “more engaged” on Saturday.
“We can point at a lot of things, but for me, It just comes down to compete,” Snowden told Growlers broadcaster Chris Ballard after the game. “We looked complacent. We looked like we didn’t want to dig in. We looked like we were OK with just being OK.
“And that’s just not us.”
The Growlers drew just three penalties in the game and had to deal with only two Maine power plays, but the Mariners scored on both of them.
“That last one was unfortunate,” said Snowden about Luchuk’s late penalty, “but the first one (a cross-checking minor to Matt Bradley), that was a bad penalty.”
Maine netminder Francois Brassard, the game’s third star, stopped 22 shots. Growlers’ rookie netminder Maksim Zhukov, who made 31 saves, was the second star.
Adams-Moisan was named the first star.
McNicholas added two assists for a three-point game played before a crowd of 4,735.
Saturday’s contest was part of a scheduling anomaly that has the teams playing four straight games at Mile One. The final two matchups are Tuesday and Wednesday.
Twitter: @telysports