Hodag hockey fades in third vs. Antigo

The Rhinelander High School boys’ hockey has kept it close in the third period in every game of its recent losing streak, but has not been able to find a way to get over the hump.

That refrain repeated itself on Tuesday night as the Hodags allowed four goals in the third period and dropped their fifth straight game, falling 7-3 to Antigo in a Great Northern Conference contest at the Rhinelander Ice Arena. 

Joey Belanger scored twice for Rhinelander (4-11-0, 1-5-0 Great Northern), including a power play goal that trimmed Antigo’s lead to 4-3 early in the third period. The Hodags had a couple of good looks to tie the game midway through the frame but could not find the equalizer. Antigo’s Eli Kassler put the game away with his fourth and fifth goals of the evening, part of a three-goal barrage for the Red Robins (9-9-0, 3-4-0 Great Northern) over the final 8 minutes of the contest. 

“It was a combination of bad penalties, some not good penalty killing tonight and some really crazy letdowns,” Hodag coach M.J. Laggis said afterward. 

Rhinelander went in trying to put the brakes on Kassler, who now has 44 goals in 20 games on the year. That idea went awry on the opening shift as Kassler picked up a mishandled puck in his own zone and skated all the way in for a breakaway goal just 24 seconds into the contest. 

Kassler added two assists for Antigo on Thursday, as he played a factor in all seven Red Robin goals.

“I thought we had a good plan to try to take Eli out of it and we kind of took ourselves out of it,” Laggis said. “I’m not going to get in the particulars of what went on there but we were just unable to execute what we were trying to do and at points we got in our own head a little bit.”

It seemed as though every time the Hodags responded, Kassler and the Robins had an answer. Belanger got loose on a breakaway to tie the game at 1 7:19 into the opening period, but Kassler scored on the power play, poking home a rebound in front of the Hodag cage just over a minute later and the Robins took a 2-1 lead to the first intermission.

Sophomore Dylan Shefveland scored his third goal of the year on a rebound to tie it at the 11:08 mark of the second, but the draw was short-lived as Kassler stuffed home another rebound chance at the 13:01 mark and Antigo led 3-2 after two. 

Liam Burt put Antigo up 4-2 on the power play 2:31 into the third. Belanger got the Hodags back to within one on the power play a short time later but the Robins pulled away late.

An Antigo team that had scored just eight power play goals all season had three on Thursday against a scuffling Hodag penalty kill. Aside from Kassler’s contributions, the common denominator in all three goals was that front line forward Gavin Denis was in the penalty box each time. Denis, who had taken just three penalties all season coming into Thursday, was forced to leave the game early after picking up his fourth penalty of the night on an elbowing call with 6:15 remaining. 

“It’s very difficult. We’ve got to play better than that. There were some atrocious penalties that are not acceptable and certainly our penalty kill was weak tonight,” Laggis said. “We kill against our power play all the time and we just absolutely unraveled on it. Clearly, that’s one of the many things that we have to continually work on, the basics of penalty killing, what happens when the have two guys up top and we’re in a box, what happens when they roll into an umbrella or 1-3-1 type look. We were unable to do it. Several times we had two forwards standing on the same point and they slid the puck across to the weak side and it was just a home run every time they did that.”

Rhinelander outshot Antigo 40-27 in the contest but the Robins got the better of the goaltending battle thanks to a 37-save effort from Nolan Bunnell. Rhinelander’s Tyler Kimmerling made 20 saves in the loss. 

Despite the defeat, Laggis said he tried to take away some positives away from the contest.

“Joey Belanger shot the puck really well, two nice goals,” he said. “I thought Dalton Fritz played one of his better games at D. He really stepped up and started playing some pretty decent hockey, had some good shots and created a lot. He really battled hard. 

“Dylan Shefveland going to the back door, we work on that a lot, getting that hard, low shot and then getting a guy to just slam on that rebound as hard as he can. Dylan followed that shot really well and the result was a goal.”

The loss locked Rhinelander into the No. 7 seed for the Great Northern Conference tournament and set up a scenario where the Hodags will have to play Lakeland back-to-back in Minocqua. The Hodags faced the T-Birds on Thursday night, after this edition went to press, to wrap-up GNC round-robin play. Lakeland, which wrapped up the No. 2 seed in the conference with an 11-0 win at Medford Tuesday, will host the Hodags again this coming Tuesday to open the GNC tournament. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].