Team USA jumped on the board first off a Will Horcoff (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.) snipe from the left circle at 10:08. Cullen Potter (Minneapolis, Minn.) rimmed a puck behind the cage and Conrad Fondrk (White Bear Lake, Minn.) used a nice slip play to be first to the puck. He dropped it for Horcoff, who connected for his 11th score of the season and a 1-0 lead. 

The visiting Phantoms responded with the next pair of scores in the game to take a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes. First, it was Kuzma Voronin who lit the lamp from the left faceoff dot on the power play. Less than three minutes later, Plymouth, Mich., native Luke Osburn put Youngstown on top with another wrister from an identical location.

The U17s evened the score just 82 seconds into the middle frame. Jack Murtagh (East Greenbush, N.Y.) thwarted a Phantoms zone entry and pitched the puck up to a driving Will Moore (Ithaca, N.Y.).  He delayed and chipped a backhand up over the shoulder of Colin Winn to make it a 2-2 contest.

Once again, Youngstown came back with the next pair of scores. Michael Monroe was the beneficiary of a goalmouth scramble and he knocked it by Joey Slavick (Westland, Mich.) to put the Phantoms ahead once more. Just prior to the halfway mark of the game, it was defenseman Coleson Hanrahan who found the back of the net after a similar jumble in front to give Youngstown a 4-2 lead that they held until the end of the period.