Cornell scores twice, but Charlotte Checkers fall to Milwaukee Admirals

The Charlotte Checkers kept battling but couldn’t quite put away the Milwaukee Admirals, who escaped with a 4-3 victory Friday night at Bojangles’ Coliseum.

After falling behind 2-1 midway through the second period, the Checkers traded scores with the Admirals, with Justin Shugg tying the score at 2-all early in the third with a one-time blast off an offensive zone faceoff. But Max Reinhart put away a breakaway goal two minutes later to put the Admirals back on top. The Checkers continued to mount pressure throughout the rest of regulation, including a furious stretch in the final minute, but couldn’t find the late-game magic typical of some other games this season, falling by one goal.

Mike Cornell, who rejoined the Checkers on a professional tryout contract Thursday to help an ailing blue line, threaded two shots from the point through traffic and in for the first multigoal game of his pro career.

For the third straight game, Charlotte played mostly with just five defensemen due to an ailment affecting Rasmus Rissanen.

“We had some guys really step up,” said head coach Mark Morris. “Cornell did a fabulous job of stepping in and generating some offense from the point, and again, our workhorses were [Trevor] Carrick and [Jaccob] Slavin.”

While the Checkers were able to produce some offense and battle back multiple times, their downfall was quickly allowing the Admirals to jump back into the games, with Milwaukee’s third and fourth goal coming within three minutes of a Checkers’ tally.

“We let them back in as soon as we struck back and climbed back into the game,” said Morris. “It was pretty disheartening to work that hard to get a goal and then give one up right after. I can¹t fault our guys for all the energy we expended. We worked our tails off but we’ve got to do a better job of shutting them down.”

This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 11:12 PM with the headline "Cornell scores twice, but Charlotte Checkers fall to Milwaukee Admirals."