Force face early weekend test at Sioux City–USHL Weekend preview

The Fargo Force dropped a pair of games last weekend and will be looking to snap out of that brief skid when it hits the road Thursday (Oct. 20) at Sioux City.

While the Force fell under the .500 plateau at 3-4-0-0 last weekend, the Sioux City Musketeers split a weekend pair and sit at 4-2-1-0 entering the game Thursday.

The Force will visit the Tyson Events Center for a pair, hanging around for another game 24 hours later. The teams have already squared off once this season, the Musketeers taking that one, also on home ice Oct. 1 by a 5-2 score.

The Force will be led by a trio of players currently event at nine points, good enough for a fifth place tie among the league’s leaders. Jack Adams, 19, from Massachusetts has five goals and four assists while Hank Crone, 18, from Texas had three goals and six helpers and Blake Lizotte, 18, from Lindstrom, MN has contributed a goal and eight assists.

The Force have scored 22 times through its first seven games, six more than the Musketeers who lead the Western Conference defensively with just a dozen allowed.

A big part of the defensive work is looked after by Matiss Kivlenieks, the team’s 20-year-old Latvian goaltender who has been beaten just eight times on 152 shots so far and boasts a solid 4-1-1 record with a  1.27 Goals Against Average and a .927 Save Percentage, third best in the league in both categories.

While that will mark the only game played on Thursday night, there will be a host of others included on Friday:

The 4-4-0-0 Omaha Lancers will be in Plymouth, MI to face the 2-4-1 Team USA at the USA Hockey Arena while the defending Clark Cup finalist Dubuque Fighting Saints look to get back to .500 as they put their 3-4-0-0 record on the line at the Covelli Center against the Youngstown Phantoms who won a pair last weekend to improve to 5-2-0-0; the 4-3-0-0 Muskegon Lumberjacks will be at US Cellular Coliseum to play the Bloomington Thunder; the 7-0-0-0 Chicago Steel will put its perfect record on the line against the winless (0-6-1-0) Cedar Rapids Roughriders at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena; the 5-1-0-1 Des Moines Buccaneers will host the 4-4-0-0 Lincoln Stars at Buccaneeer Arena in Des Moines; the Waterloo BlackHawks will look to improve on its 6-1-0-0 start and extend a six-game winning streak at the Alliant Energy Center against the 2-4-0-0 Madison Capitols and the 5-3-0-0 Green Bay Gamblers will be at the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center to visit the host 2-4-0-1 Sioux Falls Stampede.

 

 

 

 

 

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