Junior forward AJ Giannavola scored four times to extend his league leading totals to 14 goals and 23 points in six games, but a power play goal by Irondequoit with 10 seconds remaining handed the Rangers their first loss of the season 7-6.
The game featured seven lead changes and the score was tied six times.
“Very sloppy game I felt start to finish on our end; we’re not always going to be able to outscore our problems; we have to tighten up defensively,” Spencerport head coach Ryan Ford said.
“I thought we had that figured out based on the past couple games, but we need to get back to work here and figure it out.”
Irondequoit took a 1-0 lead just 54 seconds into the contest, but the Rangers took just seven seconds to tie it 1-1 as Giannavola intercepted a pass in the offensive zone and skated in alone on the goaltender for the unassisted goal.
Junior defenseman Chris Hammerle broke Giannavola in alone at 2:12 with a long head-man pass to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead, but the Eagles tied it 2-2 with a goal at 7:08 of the first.
Spencerport was granted a five-on-three power play early in the second period and capitalized as Giannavola completed his third hat trick of the season with assists from seniors Mark Neu and Luc Fedele.
But the Rangers then allowed a shorthanded breakaway on the same power play after a blocked shot from the point to again tie the game 3-3. They showed resilience coming back to retake the lead 4-3 just 43 seconds later as sophomore Ryan Plouffe’s wrister found the net after passes from Hammerle and junior Andrew Simoncelli.
The Eagles tied the game on a redirect as 5:14, but again the Rangers returned fire as Giannavola completed a two-on-one break with Fedele on a breakout started by Neu to lead 5-4.
After Irondequoit scored on a rebound to knot the contest at 5-5 after two periods, Spencerport found themselves on the power play early in the third.
Giannavola raced down the left wing and fed a perfect pass to senior Jason Uebelacker on the doorstep for the tap-in goal for his sixth goal of the campaign.
Irondequoit re-tied the tilt 6-6 with a redirect goal at the 6:00 mark before gaining a power play with 61 seconds left. They converted the goalmouth scramble at 14:50 to eke out the win.
“We need to pick up sticks in front of the net and that’s day-one hockey since this game was invented and we need to get back to the basics,” Ford said. “We can shoot the puck, we can enter the zone correctly, but when we try to get into individual play and stuff like that we break down and we’re not a good enough team for that so we need to figure some of that out for sure.”
