TOLEDO, Ohio – The Toledo Cherokee scored first, but the Metro Jets then roared back with four unanswered goals to knock off the Cherokee 4-1 Friday night at the Team Toledo Ice House.
Spencer Sandberg opened the scoring for Toledo 8:27 into the first period before Joey Demarte (14:57) and Jhuwon Davis (16:24) responded with power-play goals to give the Jets a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes.
Anthony Cinato scored shorthanded at 7:36 of the second period and Joey Bruce rounded out the scoring at 11:18 of the period.
Cinato also had two assists for a three-point game.
The third period was scoreless.
“Overall, we played a pretty solid game, especially in the offensive zone,” Jets coach-GM Justin Quenneville said. “We made a couple poor decisions defensively, but Freddy made the save to keep us ahead. Credit to their goalie for making some big saves. In a penalty-filled game like this, I’m glad our special teams were solid and tomorrow, we will have to build off that.”
Jets goalie Fredrik Meurling (pictured) finished with 18 saves in earning the win, while Toledo goalie Devon Bobak made 63 saves in suffering the defeat.
“We had success when we simplified the game and didn’t overhandle pucks,” said Metro forward Rhett Limback. “We knew coming in that Toledo plays hard in their own barn, so we had to get them to play our game and tilt the ice. We tested their goalie substantially as well.
“Coming off of break, I thought we started out a little complacent and credit to Toledo – they capitalized on it early. That woke us up a bit, and we started to clean up our plays from there. From there, all four lines got involved tonight. It was a special teams clash, and that’s where we took control of the game. In the third, Toledo wanted to throw the bodies around, we stuck to our game plan, and ultimately left the Ice House with two points.”
The two teams play again Saturday night at Fraser Hockeyland with opening faceoff set for 7:30 p.m.
The Metro Jets DP Team travels to play the Pittsburgh Vengeance at 6:30 p.m.
Both games will be streamed on www.HockeyTV.com.
