Hancock forward Bryce Vanderwest skates the puck in the offensive zone while Calumet’s Hans Kiilunen (12) and Dylan Crouch (14) defend during a game Tuesday at the Houghton County Arena in Hancock. Hancock’s Todd Kilpela (7) looks on. (Daver Karnosky/Daily Mining Gazette)

HANCOCK — Since 2017, the Calumet Copper Kings hockey team has been the most consistently strong team in the Copper Country. Teams looking to see how much they have grown as a group would find the answers they were looking for by facing the Copper Kings.

Tuesday night, the Hancock Bulldogs measured themselves, and their progress since a recent coaching change, against the Copper Kings, at the Houghton County Arena, where the hosts emerged victorious, 4-2.

For interim coach Kyle Hauswirth and the Bulldogs, a fast start that saw junior winger Benett Sturos score just 6:52 into the contest, set the tone for the rest of the game.

“It’s extremely important for us to have a fast start and get up early in games,” he said. “I think that we do play better once we get a goal early in games.”

Sturos, who already had one strong scoring chance earlier in the game on a similar play, jumped on a failed clearing attempt by a Calumet defender. He skated the puck through the slot, deked to his backhand and then beat Copper Kings goaltender Aksel Loukus by lifting a shot over him as he sprawled out to try to poke the puck away.

Getting contributions from players like Sturos will help the Bulldogs as they continue to build confidence in the latter stages of the season.

“Recently, we’ve had quite a bit of depth scoring from our second and third lines, which is huge,” Hauswirth said. “We’re going to need it if we want to win in playoffs or anything. We’re going to need more than just our first line scoring, for sure.”

For Copper Kings coach Dan Giachino, whose team came into the night having won three of their last four games, the slow start left him stymied as to the reason.

“We just absolutely took at least a period and a half off in the hockey game,” he said. “I thought there were times a little bit, in the first period, where we did, okay. Third period, I thought we played reasonably well.

“We didn’t accomplish what we wanted to accomplish with that. We didn’t set the tone. We came out flat. We didn’t have a lot of energy or enthusiasm and kind of got what we deserved.”

The second period was much the same for both teams, except that Hancock poured more pressure into the slot in front of Loukus. It took nearly 11 minutes for them to find a shot that beat him, but when they did, it was off the stick of junior winger Sam Roberts, who buried a wrister from the left circle at 10:59.

Just 23 seconds later, the Copper Kings responded by finally recording a shot on goal, their first of the period. The good news for Giachino’s squad was that it found the back of the net. Senior winger Donnie Nicely fired the shot that found its way through Bulldogs goaltender Daniel Wroblewski at 11:22.

Hancock (12-9 overall) responded with the first of two goals from junior center Bryce Hanner when he took a pass from sophomore winger Ian Nordstrom in the left circle and he wristed a shot that got past Loukus at 15:27.

The goal was a direct result of the Bulldogs staying in-system in the offensive zone, said Hauswirth.

“We were hard on pucks tonight, which created a lot of space,” he said. “A couple of the goals were (the result of) good system play from us. Bryce’s first goal started from him being in a perfect spot in our offensive zone, and then grabbing the puck and having the confidence to make a play there, which was huge.”

Calumet (7-10-2 overall) cut the lead back to one 4:48 into the third period when senior defenseman Landon Goulette wired a shot from the left circle past Wroblewski while on the power play.

The Bulldogs were awarded a power play of their own almost four minutes later. Calumet did a good job of killing the penalty off and were seeming to build some momentum off their effort, but that was derailed during a collision in the slot in the offensive zone.

Hanner was backing up through the slot in an attempt to help out Wroblewski. Unbeknownst to him, however, Wroblewski skated away from his crease in an attempt to cut down the shooting lane. Hanner and Wroblewski crashed into each other and Wroblewski lost his helmet in the collision. As everyone on the ice continued into the corner to Wroblewski’s right after the whistle blew, Hancock sophomore Max Heinonen and Calumet junior Cam Anderson got tangled up in a scrum that saw both skaters whistled for 12 minutes of penalties each.

Losing Anderson with just 8:20 left in regulation took any momentum Calumet felt they had built away, said Giachino.

Hancock killed off another penalty late in the contest to keep their one-goal advantage in the final two minutes. Hanner iced the game for the Bulldogs when he tipped a shot from senior defenseman Mich Cora at 15:15.

Wroblewski made eight saves to earn the win for Hancock. Loukus made 33 saves for Calumet in the loss.

Up next

Hancock is off until Saturday when they travel to face Escanaba at 6;30 p.m.

Calumet is off to Trenton to take part in the MIHL Showcase. They will face East Grand Rapids on Friday at 12:40 p.m. and then they will play Trenton on Saturday at 9 a.m.