Sockers Conquer 3rd-Quarter Jinx, Beat Storm : MSL: Hat trick by St. Louis’ Preki can’t keep Sockers from third straight victory.

Sockers Coach Ron Newman had little trouble finding a topic for his halftime talk during Friday night’s 8-5 victory over the St. Louis Storm.

The Sockers went into the locker room with a 3-1 lead after 30 minutes. But don’t blame the Sockers if they felt somewhat uncomfortable. In three previous meetings with the Storm this season, the Sockers had halftime leads, only to blow two in overtime.

“We look at our history, and we stink the place up in the third quarter,” Newman said. “We’re well aware of that. We just have to remember that that is our bad period and try to do something different.”

Mission accomplished. The Sockers netted four goals in the third quarter, negating a third-quarter hat trick from Storm star Preki, and the Sockers held on for their third consecutive victory.

It was the first time this year the Sockers (8-9) have won three in a row and it allowed them to pull within one-half game of the second-place Storm (9-9) in the MSL’s Western Division.

For the Sockers, Paul Dougherty scored two goals (Nos. 16 and 17 of the season) and added two assists. With his second goal, Dougherty, a four-year veteran, picked up his 100th career goal in the MSL.

Wes Wade also contributed two goals, and Brian Quinn assisted on three goals.

“We’re playing better, no doubt about that,” Newman said. “The Achilles’ heel of our team is improving every game.”

“Some games we haven’t been finishing too good,” Dougherty said. “But tonight we hung tough.”

The Sockers made sure their third-quarter doldrums would not return when Michael Collins found Dougherty in the slot for a 4-1 lead two minutes, 13 seconds into the second half. Dougherty beat Storm goalie Zoltan Toth, who was out of position after chasing down an earlier shot.

Preki narrowed the Sockers’ lead to 4-2 with 11:51 remaining in the third with his 29th goal of the season.

But the Sockers put to rest any thoughts they might falter. They scored three unanswered goals in a span of 4:28 for a 7-2 lead.

Wes Wade raced half the length of the field to beat Toth for a 5-2 lead. Ben Collins scored 55 seconds later on a crossing pass from Dougherty. And Paul Wright padded the lead on a pass from Quinn.

“Tonight there was no doubt that we were worrying about it in the third quarter,” Wade said. “I don’t know what it is, but we just don’t go out and play hard. We don’t go out pumped up and we are lackadaisical.”

Preki rallied the Storm when he notched his 30th and 31st goals of the season before the close of the third quarter.

But Branko Segota notched his first goal of the season to open the fourth-quarter scoring. Segota, who missed 13 games with a cracked right fibula, scored on a power play, assisted again by Quinn, who started the play off a free kick.

“I’m glad he scored,” Newman said of Segota. “He really couldn’t do anything physical during his time off, so it’s nice to see him get one early.”

St. Louis’ Claudio De Oliveira, who beat the Sockers two weeks ago with a goal in overtime, picked up a goal with 3:10 left.

The Sockers outshot the Storm 36-26 and dominated the Storm in the midfield.

Said St. Louis Coach Don Popovic: “We looked very tired today, and we were not aggressive enough. They had a couple of lucky goals that went in, but you can’t take anything away from them. They’re a very good team and they caught us on a very bad night.”

Darryl Doran’s goal had given the Storm a 1-0 lead in the first quarter before Dougherty bounced Rod Castro’s rebound into the net to tie the score.

Sparked by that somewhat fluky goal, the Sockers got goals from Jim Gabarra on a screen shot and from Wade. Then, it was a matter of holding on through the third quarter.

“You’ve just got to keep trying to do it in the bad stretches and keep on going,” Newman said.

Socker Notes

This was the fifth Sockers-Storm game this year and the first that did not go into overtime. . . . Waad Hirmez assisted on Jim Gabarra’s goal in the second quarter. Hirmez has garnered a point in 12 of the last 13 games. . . . The Sockers have won five of their past seven games. . . . Brian Quinn now has six multi-assist performances on the season. Victor Nogueira started his 18th consecutive game in goal and moved past Jim Gorsek into second for most consecutive games started for a Socker goalie. Alan Mayer has the team record; he started 33 in 1982-83.