For the second straight night, the Milwaukee Admirals came out of the gates a little sluggish. Unlike Friday night's loss at Rockford, though, the Ads were able to right the ship and pull out a 3-2 overtime win Saturday night against Manitoba.

You can check out the game sheet here, Dave Boehler's report at JSOnline here, and Manitoba's recap here. You can check out our great recap - complete with Chris Jerina's photos - simply by staying put.

The Admirals came out a little flat in this one, as Manitoba outshot the Admirals 13-6 in the opening stanza. The bigger problem was that the Admirals were also whistled for two minor penalties.

"There's never really any explanation," said Ben Guite. "We weren't skating, we weren't hitting. That's fundamental hockey. We worked hard last night - so maybe we were beat up a little bit emotionally and spiritually. Whether you feel it or not physically, you still have to do the basics, and we weren't doing that in the first period."  

When Mark Van Guilder tripped Nolan Baumgartner late in the first, it gave Manitoba another crack at Milwaukee's god-awful penalty killing unit. About a minute later, they had a 1-0 lead they would take into the lockerroom.

"I certainly wasn't happy with the start," said Coach Lane Lambert. "You don't want to come out flat after a six game road trip - but we did that."

Much like Friday night's game, the Admirals came out in the second period with a lot more jump. Mike Santorelli took an offensive-zone face off at the left dot. He won the draw, and the puck went toward the wall. Mike broke that way, collected the puck off the boards himself, and cut back toward center ice. He backhanded a shot that beat Daren Machesney stick-side and knotted the game at one.

Often times, we grow frustrated when Mike Santorelli tries to do too much on his own. In this instance, it certainly paid off.

Unfortunately, Milwaukee continued to struggle on the Penalty Kill. Ryan Maki was whistled twice for minor penalties within a 3 minute span late in the second period. when Manitoba converted on the second of those penalties, it gave them another one-goal lead. The Admirals have now surrendered 7 Power Play goals in 24 chances. That's a Penalty Kill success rate of 70.8%.

That's Abysmal.

"We're probably close to last in the league," said Coach Lambert....correctly. "There's no question we've got to get better at that. They got a great power play tonight and I'll take responsibility for that. I don't know that we prepared well enough."

Fortunately, Mike Santorelli didn't allow Manitoba to keep the momentum that goal gave them. One minute later, he took a feed in transition from Peter Olvecky and beat Machesney top shelf - from roughly the same spot as his first goal. That tied the game up at two.

"That kind of keeps us in the game," said Guite. "It's late in the second and that's a huge goal and that's what he can provide. When he gets going, he's tough to stop. He's quick, he's shifty and he's got a flair for those big goals."  

"He was terrific," added Lambert. "He ignited us is what he did - he was good all night. He was making things happen offensively. When things were a little bit blah for us out there for us he ignited us with a goal and he responded with another goal after they scored."

The third period was actually pretty boring. So I'm going to skip it.

In overtime, it was Mike Santorelli again that created all the opportunities. He broke in with speed on Machesney from the right boards. As he cut to the net, Brian Salcido was forced to hook him. He prevented the shot on goal, but also drew a two-minute minor. 1:58 seconds later, Robert Dietrich fired a pass through the seam to Ben Eaves, who threw it to Guite in front of the crease. Guite was able to slide it past a sprawling Machesney for the game winner.

"I'm happy - the guys deserve it," said Lambert. "We've been on the road, and we haven't played bad. We've worked hard but we haven't been getting the results for it - for whatever reason.  That's one of the main reasons I'm so pleased. At this point in time - it's the morale."

NOTES:

Coach Lambert shuffled up the lines tonight:

Ian McKenzie was a healthy scratch - but not because he had been playing poorly. Lambert wanted to roll four lines more effectively against what he figured would be a tired Manitoba team. "That's their twelfth game of the year, and we felt like we started to wear them down a little bit as the game went down," explained Lambert.

Teemu Laakso was a late scratch, as Jason Jozsa made his Admirals debut. Laakso has an upper body injury - and will be re-evaluated Monday. His status for Wednesday is uncertain, but it doesn't sound like he'll miss significant time.

Jozsa actually did a very good job filling in. He defended a breakaway by Manitoba's Matt Pettinger late in the first period. Pettinger had a step on him, but Jozsa made that up, and stayed with Pettinger through a spin move and knocked the puck away. It was a move that pleased Coach Lambert.

"He played great. That's one of the reasons that we signed him - because he has experience. He played fifty games in Grand Rapids last year and ten playoff games and he looked like a guy who had that experience and he played very well for us. I thought he was really good tonight."

Mark Dekanich played measurably better than he did Friday night. He made 25 saves, although his work load was grew lighter as the game went on. He only faced 3 shots on goal over the final 25 minutes of play.

The Admirals Penalty Kill is ranked 27th out of 30 AHL teams. That is extremely out-of-character for a Milwaukee team. Tonight's hero Ben Guite is new to the team - and the penalty killing unit. And he says that may actually be the problem.

"It's a little bit of chemistry, it's early in the season, guys are getting called up; Scatchard was on there, now I'm on there, you have different defensemen on there. Cody Franson, you've got Sulzer on there, then all of a sudden they're gone, then you put Laakso in, Laakso's out tonight. So it's a lot of change. Penalty killing is a lot of 'read and react' and you have to make sure you know what your partner is going to do and you kind of just read off of him. It's a little bit matter of time and practice and communication. We're going to work the kinks out, but a lot of it's just being used to each other."