HANCOCK — It would be easy to dissect the Finlandia Lions men’s hockey team’s 6-1 loss to the Marian Sabres Friday night at the Houghton County Arena as a disastrous start.

While the stats say one thing, six goals on 38 shots for the Sabres to one goal and 24 shots for the Lions, for Finlandia, just getting the chance to take the ice and play a game for the first time in nearly 357 days was a win in itself.

Head coach Joe Burcar admitted after the contest that he could have dressed down his squad for the mistakes and miscues that led to the lopsided score, but he chose rather to focus on the fact that his team had the chance to play, something that will be far more valuable to his young squad that features just three seniors, two of which are goaltenders.

“It’s a blessing,” Burcar said. “I mean, you could use a lot of different phrases right now, but it’s just we’re fortunate to play.

“It’s a good group of guys. I’m not gonna be frustrated with them because we did a lot of good things against a quality opponent. We (have to) do better if we want to win.”

The Lions had stretches of the game where they were dominant, pinning the Sabres in their own end. Unfortunately, they could not sustain that pressure for longer than five minutes at a time.

“We did a lot of good things well,” said Burcar. “So the score doesn’t indicate really where it’s at…so we’ll build off of this. We did a lot of good things. We’ll clean up the areas (we have to).

“It’s not hard to figure out what to clean up. That’s the good thing, it’s fixable. We got to play. It’s not the result we wanted, but we’re gonna move forward.”

There are reasons to trust that Burcar made the right decision with his young group. Two young players had several very good nights, despite the team’s overall struggles. Assistant captain Tyler Vanuden found himself seeing action on the power play, on the penalty kill, in key moments throughout the night, and he rewarded his coach’s faith with his first goal of the season at 13:25 of the second period when he took a pass from freshman defenseman Chris Beyer and beat Sabres goaltender Colby Muise.

“It was nice to see him (score),” said Burcar. “That goal he scored was such an incredible effort on his part. It was good to see him get that goal and (take the) pressure off for him.

“He’s got a letter on his sweater and that was a goal ‘lead by example.’ He did a lot of good things.”

Another Lions skater who had a strong night was freshman defenseman Kevin Bostwick. The Houghton native had two shots on goal and showed flashes of his offensive ability. One other shot just missed the net when he skated in on a 3-on-2 the Lions put together while shorthanded.

“For a freshman to step up and do that, like he did tonight in his first game, I thought he did a tremendous job,” Burcar said. “We all thought he did a tremendous job. He made good reads, but he does that every day in practice for us. He’s just gonna continue to get better and better, which is a bonus for all of us.”

However, the good news ended there. Just 1:18 into the contest, the Sabres struck when Anthony Bilka beat Gloss. The Sabres also scored 1:37 into the second off a shot from Bronson Adams and 30 seconds into the third when Gianni Vitali scored, giving them cushions throughout the night that made it difficult for the Lions to stick with their game plan.

The Sabres added two more goals in the first from Blaine Caton and Parker Colley to take a 3-0 lead in to the locker room. Bryson Cecconi added an insurance tally 10:14 into the third to seal the victory.

“Marian’s very good team,” said Burcar. “They’ve been in the playoffs for the last four years. We know they have a strong powerplay coming in and they scored a minute and a half into the game 5-on-5. I don’t think that really fazed us. I think going down 3-0 after one was, was not the script that we wrote.”

Gloss made 32 saves in the loss.

The two teams head to Fond du Lac Saturday for the rematch at 8 p.m.

Scoring

MAR 3 1 2 – 6

FIN 0 1 0 – 1

First period

1, MAR, Anthony Bilka (Blaine Caton, Gianni Vitali), 1:18

2, MAR, Caton (Ty Mosimann, Bilka), PP, 6:13

3, MAR, Parker Colley (Salvatore Scalise), 17:16

Second period

4, MAR, Bronson Adams (Troy Ring, Vitali), 1:37

5, FIN, Tyler Vanuden (Chris Beyer), 13:25

Third period

6, MAR, Vitali (Caton), PP, :30

7, MAR, Bryson Cecconi (Jack Sampson, Nathan Walker), 10:14

Saves

Muise, MAR 6 10 7 – 23

Gloss, FIN 10 8 14 – 32

Power plays

MAR: 2/4; FIN: 0/4

Penalties

MAR: 7/14; FIN: 7/14