Men's Ice Hockey 2/9/2024 11:21:00 PM Joel Norman

PETERS’ FOUR-POINT NIGHT LEADS STARS PAST BUCS

SPINALE SCORES AND ADDS TWO ASSISTS

Keaton Peters scored two goals and added two assists to give the Lincoln Stars a 5-4 win over the Des Moines Buccaneers on Friday night at the Ice Box.

Ryan Spinale added a goal and two assists on his birthday. Lincoln (17-19-0-2) scored twice in each of the first two periods and also recorded 19 shots in the second period.

"We put pucks in the right spaces," head coach Rocky Russo said. "We broke pucks out quickly. There was really good puck support. We were touching pucks first in the offensive zone. We were transitioning into defense. We took care of the neutral zone and obviously that's how we want to play."

Des Moines (15-21-4-0) opened the scoring when Nathan Delladonna struck 3:06 into the game. It took the Stars just over nine-and-a-half minutes to respond but they didn't waste time taking the lead. German Yavash and Peters scored 48 seconds apart to put Lincoln in the lead for good. Yavash cashed in off a feed from Justin Mexico in the slot to even the game up at the 12:38 mark of the first. Montgomery dangled through a couple of defenders and flicked the puck to his left to Peters, who backhanded it past goaltedner Jacob Reinholdt.

The Stars followed up a two-goal first period with two more in the second. Shortly after losing the zone during a sustained zone attack the Stars forced a turnover just past the blue line and cashed in. Peters stole the puck away and handed it off to Spinale, who lit the lamp with a wrist shot from the high slot 1:36 into the second.

Including Spinale's goal, the Stars recorded 12 straight shots before the Buccaneers recorded one but the visitors next shot resulted in their second goal of the game as Ilya Protas cut the deficit to one on a backhander near-post side nearly six minutes later.

Jared Mangan restored the two-goal by popping the bottle on a top-shelf wrister from atop the right circle on the power play at the 13:04 mark of the second. That marked the third consecutive game that the Stars scored a power-play goal and they have now scored on 42.1-percent (8-for-19) of man-advantage opportunities since Jan. 19.

Peters out-waited the defense to tuck the puck around the pads of Reinholdt for the Stars' final goal and his sixth career multi-goal game at the 5:16 mark of the third. Liam Watkins scored off a misplay 1:04 later and Davis Borzinksis weaved through the defense to strike in the final minute to cut the deficit to one.

The Stars and the Buccaneers battle again on Saturday night at 6 in the final game of the regular-season series.

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