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KEARNEY — The Tri-City Storm couldn’t cool off the red-hot Omaha Lancers.

Even though Tri-City had an advantage in shots on goal and in some ways out-played Omaha, the Lancers came away with a 4-1 victory Wednesday night at the Viaero Event Center in Kearney.

It was the ninth straight victory for the Lancers (11-1-0).

“I thought it was a good game, a hard-fought game,” Storm coach Drew Shoneck said. “But we made three mistakes, or four mistakes, and their skill was able to capitalize on them. When they made mistakes, we were unable to.”

The Lancers scored twice in the first period on goals by Matt White and Joe Lavin.

After Tri City’s Nate Jensen scored in the first minute of the second period, Omaha’s Seth Ambroz completed a scoring statement for his line with a goal less than three minutes later.

Ambroz’s line, now with 21 goals this season,  includes White and Erik Haula. White assisted on the other two goals, and Haula assisted on all of the Lancers’ first three goals.

“The best player on the ice was Matt White. He was a difference maker,” Omaha coach Bliss Littler said.

The Lancers scored the final goal in the third period, stealing the puck near the Storm’s blue line and skating in on a two-man break for a goal by Ryan Daugherty.

The goal sealed the third straight loss for the Storm, who got off to a 7-1-1 start.

 “This is the best team in the league, and if we went out there and got totally dominated, I might be a little bit more inclined to be panicked,” Schoneck said. “This was a good game tonight. … The way we’re playing isn’t concerning me.”

For about half the game, Schoneck felt his team was going toe-to-toe with the USHL’s top team.

“I thought our guys battled hard, I thought we worked extremely hard and we stuck to the game plan. Unfortunately, we took a couple extra penalties that kind of gave them some momentum,” he said. “We were coming on and we took two penalties back-to-back in the final 10 minutes (of the second period) to kind of give them back some momentum.”

The Storm killed off both penalties, but that time lost to the offense was critical.

“When you’re sitting in the penalty box, whether you’re killing it off or not, you’re not attacking, you’re not giving yourself an opportunity to get yourself back on the scoreboard,” Schoneck said.

The Lancers had three power plays in the first period, and scored on one of them.

“They’ve got a 33 percent power play rate on the road and if you give them six full minutes they’re going to find a way to get a goal,” Schoneck said.

Despite the six minutes of penalty killing in the first period, the Storm set a tone with 14 shots on goal to the Lancers’ 10. Tri-City kept the pressure on, but Lancer goalie Jeff Teglia stopped 37 of 38 shots.

“I thought Tri-City had a great game plan and they outworked us most of the night. We took advantage of a few mistakes,” Littler said.

Tri-City will be on the road for its next four games before playing Sioux City in Kearney on Thanksgiving eve. The road trip may be an early key for the Storm.

“It’s a long season and every team is going to go through stretches here or there where things aren’t going their way. It’s how you deal with those stretches that will determine what kind of group you have and what kind of team you’re going to be,” Shoneck said. “We have to keep our nose to the grindstone and work our way out of it.”

e-mail to:

buck.mahoney@kearneyhub.com

Omaha 4, Tri-City 3

Score by Periods

OMAHA (11-1-0)    2    1    1 — 4

TRI-CITY (7-4-1)    0    1    0 — 1

First Period — 1, Omaha, Matt White 7 (Eric Haula), 6:55. 2, Omaha, Joe Lavin 3 (Haula, White), pp, 12:29.

Second Period — 3, Nate Jensen 3 (Jaden Schwartz, Maxwell Tardy), :41. 4, Seth Ambroz 6 (Haula, White), 3:25.

Third Period — 5, Ryan Daugherty 5 (Stefan Demopoulos) 12:44.

Shots on goal — Omaha 10-13-10 — 33, Tri-City 14-14-10 — 38

Saves — Omaha, Jeff Teglia, 37, Tri-City, Carsen Chuback 29.

Power Plays — Omaha 1-5, Tri-City 0-3.

T — 2:15, Att. — 1,845.