Pierog finds scoring stride for Mayhem

Since the start of the season, Stephen Pierog has played a major role in the Macon Mayhem’s rise to the top of the SPHL standings. Now, his on-ice presence is being rewarded through an even bigger way in the scoring column. In the past five games, Pierog has three goals and five assists, gaining a point in all but one of those contests.

This season, Pierog has nine goals, and his his hard work is showing up in a tangible way. Getting in position to score wasn’t a problem as the season began for Pierog, but he had shots bounce the wrong way or just plain bad luck.

That’s not the case as of late. On Sunday, for example, his power-play goal was the game-winner in a 2-1 win over Pensacola for the Mayhem’s sixth win in a row.

“I was snake-bitten near the start of the year. I feel like now that it’s starting to come together,” Pierog said. “It was a little frustrating at the beginning of the year. We were winning games, but it always feels good to produce.”

Pierog plays on the same line as John Siemer, who leads the team with 45 points and Matt Johnson, whose plus-minus rating of plus-17 is best among any player of the Mayhem roster.

“My linemates have been great. We’ve found a good chemistry, we’ve been working really good together,” Pierog said. “It’s pretty easy to do well with guys like that on the line. All three of us are pretty similar and play fast.”

Mayhem head coach Kevin Kerr isn’t surprised by Pierog getting into the scoring more as of late.

“He’s been solid all year. He’s a second year guy that came in last year and is now really starting to hit his stride,” Kerr said. “He’s playing well and buys into our teams style and our system, and he is getting rewarded for it.”

Sunday’s win gave Macon (30-8-5 with 65 points) a four-point lead over Huntsville (29-11-3) and Peoria (26-10-9) in the SPHL standings. The Mayhem have won six in a row, but Peoria has taken its past eight games, thrusting them into the running for first place, as well.

“There’s other teams chasing us, and Peoria’s playing pretty well. We still have a lot work to do,” Kerr said. “We have a good schedule, ourselves, but we just need to take care of the things we can take care of.”

Now comes to challenge of protecting Macon’s first-place position. The Mayhem play Saturday at Columbus with their next game coming March 17 at home also against Columbus.

Macon has 13 games to go in the regular season, including four against Huntsville, and three of those will be on the road. Macon does not play the Rivermen again in the regular season.

On paper, Macon and Huntsville have a bit of an easier road the rest of the regular season in terms of how the schedule stacks up. Macon plays the three teams in the bottom of the standings — Roanoke, Columbus and Evansville — five times to four such games for Huntsville and two of Peoria.

“We go into every game expecting to win every game that we play,” Kerr said. “We’ve got to keep going. If we want to get the top seed, we can’t slow down.”

This story was originally published March 8, 2017 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Pierog finds scoring stride for Mayhem."