BY ETHAN BLOUGH
Johnstown goaltender Kris Mayotte could only keep the Chiefs in the game for so long on Saturday night.
Wheeling peppered the home goalie with 47 shots in a 4-1 win at Cambria County War Memorial Arena.
Mayotte turned away 44 Wheeling attempts in the loss.
“I thought he played outstanding,” Wheeling assistant coach Doug Doull said of Mayotte. “He played very well. I think we had three partial breakaways in the third and he stopped them all. He gave his team a chance to win.”
Johnstown went 0-for-4 on the power play through two periods. The Chiefs were moving the puck well around the perimeter but had trouble setting up the perfect shot.
“That was 18 penalties killed in a row for us,” Doull said. “We’re settled back there and we remain focused.”
Mayotte was solid in the first period, making 18 saves, including two early stops on speedy Wheeling forward Aaron Clarke.
“Without (Mayotte), it would have been 5-0 in the first period,” Chiefs coach Neil Smith said.
The Nailers struck first when forward Jordan Morrison skated the puck down the right wing, circled behind the Johnstown net and slid the puck to a pinching Lane Caffaro in the circle, who one-timed it past Mayotte at 10:31.
Chris Davis scored Wheeling’s second goal on a feed from Clarke 5:54 into the second period. The Chiefs were forced to keep five tired skaters on the ice after an icing infraction and couldn’t clear the puck before Clarke found Davis low in the circle to the right of Mayotte.
Mayotte’s 13 saves in the second period kept the Chiefs in the game heading into the final frame. Wheeling was putting bodies in front of Mayotte, but he consistently found the puck through traffic.
“(Mayotte) held us in it until we woke up,” Smith said.
“Even after we woke up, when we were still dreary, he kept us in it.”
Clarke skated out of the corner, walked into the low slot and fired it over Mayotte’s blocker to give Wheeling a 3-0 lead with
13 minutes left in the game.
Clarke finished with a goal and an assist.
Wheeling goalie Adam Berkhoel made
21 saves on 22 shots.
Johnstown’s Brian Kaufman scored a power-play goal from the blue line with a shot that found its way through traffic into the Wheeling net 8:09 into the third.
The man-advantage goal broke Wheeling’s impressive streak, which started last weekend.
“The frustrating part was we couldn’t get anything through,” Smith said of Wheeling’s penalty killers. “They were taking away everything. We really didn’t test their goalie.”
