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Photo by Rena Laverty
The U.S. National Under-17 Team fell to the league-leading Chicago Steel tonight, 6-4.
After a scoreless first period, Ty Gallagher (Clarkston, Mich.) opened scoring after Ryan St. Louis’ (Riverside, Conn.) pass deflected off a Steel player’s stick and onto Gallagher’s. Gallagher sent the puck over the glove of Chicago’s Victor Ostman to make it 1-0 at 2:44 of the second period. Sasha Pastujov (Bradenton, Fla.) also picked up an assist on the goal.
Chicago tied the game less than two minutes later before taking a 3-1 lead by 7:11 of the second.
The Steel added another before the end of the period to take a 4-1 lead heading into the third.
Chicago added another goal on a breakaway to make it 5-1 in the third period.
Roman Schmidt (Midland, Mich.) cleaned up a rebound at the front of the net with Chicago’s netminder out to cut Chicgao’s lead to 5-2 with just over 10 minutes left. Pastujov picked up the assist on the power-play goal.
Caden Brown (St. Louis, Mo.) netted Team USA’s third of the night on a partial breakaway at 12:05 of the third period. Pastujov and Jeremy Wilmer (Rockville Centre, N.Y.) tallied the assists.
Jack Hughes (Westwood, Mass.) pulled the U17s within one after the puck deflected off his stick on a pass from Luke Hughes (Manchester, N.H.). Daniyal Dzhaniyev (Brooklyn, N.Y.) also picked up an assist.
Chicago finalized the game, 6-4, with an empty-netter with 30 seconds left.
Gibson Homer (Grand Rapids, Mich.) and Kaidan Mbereko (Aspen, Colo.) made 34 saves and the U17s went 1-for-3 on the power play.
The U17s face the Steel again tomorrow (Feb. 16) afternoon at 4 p.m. ET at Fox Valley Ice Arena.