Inside The Zone - March 8th

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Click on the VIDEO tab to your left for this week's edition of "Inside The Zone."

The Komets have a busy week at home this week. Three games are slated in four nights at the Memorial Coliseum starting with a visit from the Bloomington PrairieThunder Wednesday at 7:30pm. It's the 12th and final meeting of the season between the Komets and Thunder with Fort Wayne leading the series 8-2-1-0. The Komets have not lost in regulation at home to the Thunder this season in five previous meetings (4-0-1-0). Bloomington holds the fourth and final playoff spot in the IHL leading fifth-place Quad City by three points with three games in hand and are riding a three-game losing streak.

Friday the IHL-leading Muskegon Lumberjacks (40-15-0-3, 83 points) make their first appearance in Fort Wayne (35-18-1-2, 73 points) since Jan. 9 when the Komets doubled-up the Jacks 4-2. It's the eighth of 11 meetings this season and the fourth of six in Fort Wayne. Counting Friday's match the Komets have four of their final 20 games of the season against Muskegon. The Komets trail Muskegon by 10 points with two games in hand going into week 22. The Lumberjacks are coming off two straight losses at Port Huron over the weekend and are 2-3-0-0 in their last five games. Muskegon will host Quad City Wednesday before their 8pm faceoff in Fort Wayne Friday.

Saturday the Komets complete the week by welcoming the second-place Port Huron Icehawks (36-18-0-4, 76 points) at 7:30pm. Fort Wayne trails Port Huron by three points with two games in hand. Saturday's game will be the ninth of 11 meetings this season with the Komets trailing the series 3-5-0-0. The Icehawks are undefeated in their last four outings (3-0-0-1) and have won thier last three straight. In the race for the Huber Trophy the Hawks trail first-place Muskegon by seven points with 18 games remaining. Port Huron will host Bloomington Friday before traveling to Fort Wayne Saturday.

About last week
The Komets skated four games in five nights last week, splitting the games played for a four-point week. Week 21 started with a 4-2 home win against Dayton Wednesday. Friday the Komets stopped the PrairieThunder in Bloomington 4-1 to extend their win streak to a season-high six games. The Fort Wayne winning streak was snapped with a 3-1 loss at Flint Saturday before the Komets dropped a 3-2 decision Sunday to the visiting Generals in the back-end of a home-and-home series.
Drouin reaches 500.....P.C. Drouin (LW) dished his 500th career assist in Fort Wayne's 4-1 win at Bloomington Friday, assisting on Guy Dupuis' game winning goal.
Shooting Komets.....the Komets directed an IHL season-high 56 shots on Flint goalie Sergei Zvyagin during Sunday's 3-2 loss in Fort Wayne. Sean O'Connor (RW) had an IHL season-high 12 shots. The Fort Wayne team record for shots on goal in a game is 80, set against Dayton March 27, 1965 in a 12-1 win. The Komets currently lead the IHL with 1,963 shots in 56 games for a per-game average of 35.05 shots. In addition, the Komets also have the stingiest defense allowing an IHL lowest average of 29.5 shots per game.
Special K's.....the Komets scored on 25% of their power play chances (4/16) and were successful on all but one penalty kill (14/15, 93.3%) in the four games played to lead the IHL with an 87.2% penalty kill efficiency rate overall.