BLOOMFIELD HILLS – The Howell Highlanders spoiled senior night for the Clarkston Wolves, defeating Clarkston 5-4 in boys hockey action Saturday night.

After falling behind 2-0, Howell came back with five straight goals to claim the win.

“It was a fun game,” Howell head coach Mike Mantua said. “I used to coach over at Clarkston and watched all those players develop from their freshman year to their senior night here. So it was good to see them working hard and see how they’ve improved. It was also good to watch how our team has improved from the beginning of the season to the end. That’s our first victory against Clarkston in two years, and it was good to see how everyone pulled together.”

Just 42 seconds after Clarkston had scored to take a two goal lead late in the first period, Brendan Adams pounced on a rebound in the slot and fired it home to start the comeback for the Highlanders. 

Howell then took control behind a big second period. Jake Spisak tied the game just under four minutes into the second period when Matt Passino slid a perfect pass across the face of goal and through traffic to Spisak who got off a quick shot that snuck in.

The Highlander special teams would give Howell the lead late in the period with A.J. MItter scoring a power play goal, follow shortly by Aaron Eskola doubling the Highlanders’ lead with a short-handed goal with just 1:09 left in the period.

Clarkston controlled the first and third periods, jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the first period on goals by Carter Rea and Drake Gentile.

“It’s not often that you play two good periods of hockey and lose a game,” Wolves head coach Bryan Krygier said. “We won the first period, won the third period, lost the second. However, we dug ourselves too big of a hole to get out of in the third period.”

The Wolves battled back in the third period after Howell had taken control on the scoreboard. Rea got the comeback started with 9:45 to play in the third period when he won a face off, made a quick move, and snapped a wrist shot past the goaltender. Just under two minutes later, Clarkston cut the lead to one when a scramble in the slot created an opportunity for the Wolves and Kyle Hogarth pounced on it, shooting the puck through all the traffic and tying the game.

The Wolves would put the pressure on at the end, but they couldn’t quite find the tying goal, coming closest with just 1:06 left when a shot clanged off the outside of the post.

Both teams will now turn their focus to the state playoffs, which start on Monday.

“We rolled four lines tonight, which was nice,” Mantua said. “We like to get everybody involved and try to spread it out. Our goal as to try to improve every day of the season and eventually be ready for playoffs next week. I think we’re heading in the right direction. We’ve got a few things we’ve definitely got to clean up, and to play a good team like this right at the end is a great way to set us up for the playoffs.”

“I don’t think we played bad, it’s just we didn’t play good in the second period. That was the game, we lost it in the second period,” Krygier said. One thing Krygier did want his team to improve on as the playoffs arrive was the number of penalties they take. “We’ve got to stop taking penalties. We take penalties at inopportune times, and then they come back and score, and we take ourselves out of the game. That’s happened too much this season. When we’re not in the box, we play well.”

Howell (17-7-1) opens the playoffs on Monday when they play. Haslett at Brighton. Clarkston (16-7-2) hosts Grand Blanc on Tuesday.