Balanced attack leads Thunder to 5th straight win

Posted on November 18, 2016

By WJBC Staff

BLOOMINGTON – Mitchell Mattson is the biggest player on the Bloomington Thunder roster and he came up big for the Thunder on Friday night to help increase their winning streak to five games.

The Calgary Flames draft pick gave the Thunder (8-6-2-0, 18 pts) a first period lead and then added a big insurance goal in the second period en route to a 6-2 win over Team USA (3-8-0-1, 7 pts.) at the Coliseum.

Trailing 3-0 more than halfway through the game, Team USA scored twice in less than a two- minute span to cut the Thunder lead to just one. But after Tyler Weiss found the back of the net for Team USA at the 13:14 mark, Mattson helped the Thunder respond quickly. Bloomington won the ensuing faceoff, and Mattson followed up Mitchell Chaffee’s initial shot from the right wing and punched the rebound past Team USA goaltender Keegan Karki to put the Thunder back up by two just seven seconds later.

Bloomington added to the lead in the third period with goals from August von Ungern-Sternberg and Cameron Burke (University of Notre Dame) to give the Thunder their second-highest goal total in a game this season.

Mattson opened the scoring at the 7:42 mark of the first period, buzzing a wrist shot past Karki from the right circle. The two-goal game for Mattson was his first career multi-goal affair and his third multi-point game of the season. The Grand Rapids, Minnesota, native has tallied four goals in his last four games.

The Thunder didn’t score again until the second period, but Danny Willett registered a power-play marker just 1:29 into the middle stanza to put the Thunder up 2-0. It was the third consecutive game the Thunder had scored on the power play, a season high.

Ethan Somoza padded the Thunder lead with his fourth goal of the season, redirecting Charlie Raith’s shot from the point past Karki eight minutes, seven seconds into the second period.

In goal, Logan Halladay set a new career-high with his fifth consecutive win, stopping 19 of the 21 shots he faced.

Bloomington also took just one penalty in the game, setting a new single-game low with two total penalty minutes.

The Thunder aim for the series sweep on Saturday night in the series finale with Team USA.

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