The Youngstown Phantoms welcomed an old friend back into the crease.  Jordan Tibbett (above) has not played a game for the Phantoms since last season, has not even played in a hockey game since October,  but popped up on the roster Friday night.  Even more fascinating, he started the game looking like a rent-a-goalie with his #41 shirt, no name, and green shorts that would make the Irish jealous on St. Patrick’s Day.

Unfortunately for the Phantoms, Tri-City’s Scott Diebold (below) was also “locked” in.  The two goaltenders combined to stop 48 shots through the first two periods of a scoreless game.  Through those first two periods of the game, Youngstown had more shots (25) than Tri-City (23) but nobody could slip the puck past either net minder in a classic defensive battle.  Tri-City mustered two third period goals to get a 2-0 win on this night behind a great effort from Diebold.

The Phantoms did not put a shot on goal in the third period until the 12:53.  It seemed like so much of this game was spent in transition from one side of the rink to the other and neither squad was getting a second chance to get a shot off and the action progressed to the other end, very tennis-like.  Andrew Sinelli picked up a two-minute minor to put the Storm on the power play.  At the very tail-end of that man advantage, Tri-City got the first score of the game with 10:28 remaining.  Alex Carpenter connected unassisted just to the left of Tibbett’s crease and the puck appeared to deflect in off of Tibbett.

Brian Ward gave Tri-City a 2-0 lead when he struck gold on a quick takeaway from short range.  Danill Zharkov was credited with an assist on Ward’s third goal of the season with 6:58 left in the game.

The Phantoms only managed to take seven shots in the third period, and five of those were in the last 1:30 of the game.

With the win, Tri-City improved to 16-13-7.  Diebold posted the shutout for the Storm and did nothing to hurt his goals against average or his save percentage stopping all 33 Phantoms shots he faced.  The Phantoms dipped to 13-20-4 and played well for the most part.

After the game, Coach Carr commented on the lack of offensive production.  “I thought we came out really strong in the first period, it almost felt too easy.  In the third period, we panicked and made some costly mistakes.  Jordan played well enough to give us a chance to win but we couldn’t do much offensively in the third period.”

Carr explained why Tibbett is back and what happened to Greg Lewis.  “We activated Jordan based on his experience.  Greg played exceptionally well with us but we sent him away to develop hoping he will return next year with more experience.”