THE U REPORT Your Weekly USHL Briefing, Covering November 5 Through November 11

Two games in Sioux Falls ended 5-1, yet the winning team changed within three days. Omaha scored eight goals against Tri-City, one of the league's hottest clubs, and then gave up five unanswered the next night, while Madison put 15 past Youngstown in a weekend that had the Capitols chasing the game more than once. Swings like those show which teams have built reliable strengths and which are still trying to repeat one good performance.

Madison's recovery has been building for several weeks, and a trip to Youngstown did little to slow it. The Capitols won 7-5 on Friday and 8-4 on Saturday, and with 15 goals spread across the lineup it is hard to credit one player or one line for the sweep. Both games also required Madison to respond after Youngstown seized momentum, which makes the finishes more notable.

On Friday, Madison opened a 3-1 lead before Youngstown rallied to go ahead 4-3 in the second period. Daniel Halonen pulled the Capitols even on the power play and Bryce Wiitala put them back in front early in the third, but Kamden Kaiser tied it at 5-5 on another Youngstown power play. Logan Lutner then delivered the decisive power-play goal with 4:22 remaining, and Max Rider added an empty-netter.

Saturday took a different route to the same result. Youngstown led 3-1 in the first period, and Madison answered with five consecutive goals in roughly 16 minutes on its way to the 8-4 win. Eight different Capitols scored, and defenseman Harper Frey, whose goal tied the game at three before the first intermission, finished the series with a goal and four assists to earn USHL Defenseman of the Week honors. Youngstown forward Lukas Zajic scored four goals over the weekend and was named Forward of the Week, though that production could not offset 15 goals allowed in two home games. Madison, for its part, no longer has to lean on a single dramatic win to make the case that its early troubles are behind it.

Dubuque's weekend against Muskegon showed both the promise and the frustration of its recent offensive improvement. The Fighting Saints generated 32 shots in Friday's 3-2 loss, and Kane Johnson tied the game at one early in the third period, but Aiden Janz put the Lumberjacks back ahead just 10 seconds later and Maxim Simko supplied the eventual winner before Cruz Martin's late reply. Muskegon goaltender Samuel Doyon-Cataquiz made 30 saves, including a stop on Trevor Theuer's penalty shot.

Dubuque made its pressure count the next night. Muskegon took leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the opening period, but Olle Därth answered both times, scoring his second goal with 18 seconds left before intermission. That equalizer started a run of six unanswered goals that carried the Saints to a 7-2 victory. Luke Brierley put them ahead early in the second, David Thomasson scored twice, and Joe Wahlund added his first USHL goal.

Caden Dabrowski provided the weekend's most memorable individual sequence when he blocked a shot, joined the rush and finished with a between-the-legs move that made it 5-2. He ended the night with three points, and Martin, acquired from Green Bay, assisted on that goal after scoring in Friday's loss. Dubuque also came back from an early deficit against Waterloo in the previous reporting period, so doing it again against Muskegon points to an offense that can change a game quickly, although Friday's loss is a reminder that shot volume and sustained pressure still have to turn into a finished result.

Omaha had already shown it could win behind outstanding goaltending, and Friday against Tri-City showed how much offense it can produce when a game opens up. The Storm arrived on a five-game winning streak with the league's highest-scoring attack and led 2-0 late in the first period, but Zachary Spagnuolo and Charlie Vig scored 16 seconds apart to send the teams to intermission tied. Omaha took over in the second with four unanswered goals within 5:04 and went on to win 8-5, with Yegor Kim finishing with five points, four of them assists. The Lancers had responded to a rough start by making Tri-City do the chasing.

Saturday against Sioux City was a far less flattering test. Omaha built a 3-1 lead, and then the Musketeers scored five consecutive goals, four of them in the third period, to win 6-3. Daniil Butin contributed a goal and two assists as Sioux City completed a two-win weekend of its own.

There is real upside in an Omaha team that can win behind Anthony Sciere or outscore a dangerous opponent like Tri-City, but Friday's explosiveness did little to prevent Saturday's collapse. The Lancers have given themselves reasons to be taken seriously, and the next step is getting those strengths to show up on back-to-back nights.

Fargo arrived in Sioux Falls in excellent form and strengthened its position Saturday with a 5-1 victory. Lauri Kouhia scored on the power play 25 seconds into the third period to extend his goal streak to seven games, a stretch in which he had scored 10 goals, and the win pushed the Force's road winning streak to seven games as well.

Tuesday's rematch at the same rink produced the opposite winner with the same score. Sioux Falls won 5-1, with Brandon Mickelson opening the scoring at 5:33 of the first period on his first USHL goal, and Cooper Soller added a goal and an assist in a span of less than four minutes in the second. Ryland Rooney, who had recently returned from representing the United States at the U18 Five Nations Tournament in Switzerland, had a hand in four goals and finished the scoring late in regulation.

The victory ended Fargo's seven-game road winning streak and Kouhia's seven-game goal streak. One loss does not erase the Force's strong recent run, but Sioux Falls answered a lopsided defeat within days, and with two streaks broken in one game the split felt like more than an ordinary one.

Waterloo's sweep of Lincoln came without the wild scoring swings seen elsewhere, yet it may have offered the clearest explanation for why the Black Hawks are so difficult to beat. In Friday's 5-1 victory, Waterloo scored on three of six power plays and killed all three Lincoln advantages, with Miles Jinman scoring his first USHL goal and Caleb Deanovich and Cody Sokol also converting with the extra attacker.

Saturday's 2-1 road win called for a different kind of response. Charlie Menard made 28 saves against his former club, and Waterloo survived a full two-minute five-on-three disadvantage in the second period. Sokol opened the scoring and Deanovich added the eventual winner in the third, while Lincoln managed one power-play goal on six opportunities but could not complete the comeback.

As of Wednesday, Waterloo led the league with a 33.9 percent power-play conversion rate. The Lincoln series showed what that number is worth in practice, since the Black Hawks can build a lead with their power play and protect a narrow one when penalty trouble arrives.

Des Moines continued to move past its earlier six-game winless stretch by sweeping Chicago on the road, winning 4-2 on Friday and 5-4 in overtime on Saturday. The second game nearly got away from the Buccaneers when Chicago scored twice on the power play in the final 4:38 of regulation to erase a two-goal deficit, the kind of late setback that can shake a team's confidence.

Defenseman Kalib Capecci ended it at 3:38 of overtime, with Riley Zupfer assisting on the winner after scoring twice earlier in Saturday's game. Zupfer also added an empty-net goal in Friday's victory. Des Moines has now won three consecutive road games, and although giving up Saturday's late lead was hardly ideal, the Buccaneers kept one difficult stretch from spoiling the whole weekend.

Madison opens Wings Arena against Green Bay on Friday, which gives the Capitols another chance to show that their offense can stay productive. Green Bay comes in after a 4-3 Wednesday win over Chicago, in which a three-goal first period proved just enough and Gunnar Conboy's power-play goal stood as the winner. Muskegon hosts Cedar Rapids, whose weekend sweep of Green Bay included two strong starts from league Goaltender of the Week Joseph Skidmore, and Waterloo visits a Youngstown team that can score on the power play but has struggled to keep the puck out of its own net.

The scores will keep changing from week to week, so the more telling question is whether the developments behind them hold up when the next opponent presents a different kind of challenge.

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