Thunder loses third straight at home

Home hasn’t been particularly kind to the Thunder of late, so Wichita is hoping a brief road trip might improve its fortunes.

Quad City scored twice within 57 seconds of the first period, erasing a 1-0 Thunder lead and going on to a 5-3 victory Wednesday night at Intrust Bank Arena, sending Wichita to its third straight loss.

The Thunder and Mallards will battle Friday at Quad City, with the Thunder playing at Missouri the next night before finishing the regular season with six straight games at Intrust Arena. Wednesday’s loss dropped the Thunder to 14-13-0-2 at home, compared with 16-13-2-3 away.

“We’re a team of, I don’t know, we seem to play better on the road,” Thunder coach Kevin McClelland said. “That’s a shame, because we’ve got such a great fan base. It’s just very disappointing.”

McClelland said the bitter taste from Wednesday makes the game at Quad City all the more important.

“It’s obviously a big game for our hockey club on Friday night in their building,” McClelland said.

The victory snapped a four-game losing streak for the Mallards, who pulled into a tie for second place in the ECHL Central Division with idle Rapid City with 71 points. Tulsa remained at 70 points after a 3-1 loss to division-leading Allen. Wichita still is in the playoff hunt, just three points back at 68 points, but will have to find a way to win at home down the stretch.

RG Flath scored for the Thunder 1:26 into the game, but the Mallards’ quick strikes late in the period put Wichita on its heels. Joe Perry scored on a power-play goal at the 16:47 mark, then Justin Fox scored on a breakaway at 17:44.

McClelland said the early goal was nice to see after a 4-1 home loss Saturday to Tulsa.

“And then, all of a sudden, we get a penalty called against us, they score … then one of their guys gets behind our defense, and he’s on a breakaway. It’s 2-1, and that changes the whole complexion,” he said

The Thunder managed to tie the score 2-2 at 15:39 of the second period, but Quad City (31-27-4-3) answered less than three minutes later for a 3-2 lead at the end of the period.

McClelland pulled goaltender Grant Rohlheiser with 2:45 to play and the Mallards leading 4-2. The gambit worked for a couple of minutes, as Kenton Miller scored to make it 4-3 with 27 seconds to play. But just 11 seconds later, Fox scored his second goal of the game into the empty Wichita net.

McClelland said he thought the Thunder should have been more effective with the extra attacker.

“On that goal, we didn’t get the puck in deep, give ourselves a chance to even tie it up,” he said. “We don’t get it in deep, turn it over in the neutral zone – boom – in our net.”

This story was originally published March 25, 2015 at 11:04 PM with the headline "Thunder loses third straight at home."