The Maryland Black Bears held its first-ever banner night on Friday to celebrate the accomplishments of the 2022-2023 team, who won the 2023 regular season and postseason East Division Championships. The night did not end as planned, however, as Maryland’s division rival in the Johnstown Tomahawks topped the Black Bears in its opening game of the season by the score of 5-1.

The Tomahawks struck first in the opening period with forward Reid Lune snapping a shot from the slot to the top left corner past Maryland goaltender Colin Ronan to make it 1-0. Johnstown doubled its lead on a two-on-one chance where forward Taybor Aldrich snapped a shot from the near side of the ice short side for a 2-0 lead. Maryland responded with its lone goal of the game with 1:06 to go in the first period, where Matthew Croxall got the puck in the slot and snapped it past Tomahawks’ goaltender Jacob Osborne to the top right corner to make it 2-1. 

Johnstown responded early second period with a short side snapshot from forward Tomas Vlcek to make the score 3-1. In the third period, Johnstown defenseman Justin Gibson shot the puck through the screen on the powerplay to make it 4-1. Tomahawks defenseman Lukas Klemm capped the night off with an empty net goal with under three minutes to go, snapping the puck from the center of his own zone into the net to make the final score 5-1.

The Black Bears and Tomahawks rematch on Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. ET at Piney Orchard Ice Arena. All games can be streamed on NAHLTV.