• Box Score: Indiana 6, Omaha 3
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There are three options Mike Aikens said he needs to ponder before deciding why the Omaha Lancers laid another Saturday night egg after a big win the night before.
“Either we were tight, we were scared of Indiana because we thought they were too good for us to beat, or that we were disinterested,” Aikens said. “Right now I can't decipher which one it was.
“We stood around and got outworked, and against good hockey teams you can't cut corners and get away with the way we played.”
The Lancers' head coach said Saturday's 6-3 United States Hockey League loss to the Indiana Ice was “eerily similar” to Omaha's 4-2 loss to Waterloo on Feb. 11. That game was one night after Omaha won a hard-fought 5-4 game against Lincoln.
On Friday the Lancers rolled Cedar Rapids 7-0. Then they came out Saturday and fell behind the Ice 2-0 and 5-1 before a Civic Auditorium crowd of 4,617.
Omaha simply was flat-out flat in the opening period as Indiana built a 2-0 lead. Ice forward Kirill Lebedev scored the first of his three goals at 7:12 when he snapped a wrist shot over the glove of Lancers goalie Alex Lyon.
Just over five minutes later Daniil Tarasov, the USHL’s second-leading scorer who had an assist on Lebedev’s goal, deflected a shot by Matthew Krug from the high slot between Lyon’s pads for the 2-goal advantage the Ice took into the first intermission.
Then the Lancers, who fell to 26-14-3, looked like they might mount a comeback when Dominic Sacco scored his third goal of the season after Matt Gaudreau forced an Indiana turnover and sent the puck to Sacco with a centering pass from the right wing.
But that success was followed by a stretch of hockey that Aikens labeled “not very smart.” The 26-11-5 Ice scored three goals in a stretch of just 5:13 and the Lancers committed five of their six penalties in just over five minutes.
“Only one of those penalties I didn’t think should have been called, but he had to call the rest of those because they were legitimate penalties,” Aikens said. “We had to be disciplined and stay out of the penalty box and outwork them, and we didn’t do any of those things.”
Sean Kuraly scored the first one at 8:34, then John Doherty scored an unassisted goal at 13:19 before Lebedev knocked home his second goal at 13:47. Defenseman Kenney Morrison then gave the Lancers some hope when he scored his ninth goal of the season on a left point slap shot 56 seconds before the second break.
Omaha got back within two when Sacco scored his second goal at 14:25, but an empty net goal by Lebedev to complete his hat trick with just 1:07 remaining dashed the Lancers’ comeback hopes.
The Lancers begin a four-game road swing Tuesday at Sioux City. Their next home game is March 3 against Sioux Falls.
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