Moral victories are not welcome around these parts.
When you've lost eight of nine games (1-7-1), the sentiment is understandable.
While the Manitoba Moose deserve credit for battling back from four different one-goal deficits, the fact they picked up a point in a 5-4 overtime loss to the San Antonio Rampage last night before a crowd of 9,358 at the MTS Centre served as little consolation.
Kevin Porter provided the game-winner 45 seconds into the 4-on-4 session, tipping home a pass from Mikkel Boedker.
"Winning hockey games is what it's about and we have to find a way to do it," said Moose head coach Scott Arniel. "Yeah, we battled back but we had to. We had no other choice. The biggest thing is that we don't have all 20 guys going right now and that's what's disconcerting to me."
There was a controversial moment late in the third as replays showed that Rampage captain Jeff Hoggan redirected a shot from the point in with his skate with 2:06 left in regulation.
Since there is no replay system in place in the AHL, the Moose basically had no recourse.
"From where the referee (Kyle Rehman) was, he didn't feel it was kicked in," said Arniel. "What can you do?"
But the Moose knotted things up with 20.3 seconds left as Marty Murray tipped home a shot from Evan Oberg to force overtime.
The Moose fall to 24-22-5-1 on the AHL season and have only 10 games left in the month of February to pull out of this funk.
"I don't know where the silver linings are these days, the bottom line is that we need wins," said Moose forward Matt Pettinger, who scored in the third period to tie the game 3-3. "We have to find a way. Yeah, there's positives that we came back but there are mistakes we made and we put ourselves in that hole. We had a great third period but we have to play like that every period. There's no reason we can't have three or four lines rolling.
"It's getting down to crunch time here and we're making the same mistakes over and over again. It's February now. We have to start getting our points."
Dan Sexton scored the other two goals for the Moose.
