Marquette forward Caleb Beerman looks to make a pass to a teammate during a game against Houghton Tuesday at Dee Stadium in Houghton. (Houghton Daily Mining Gazette photo by Daver Karnosky)

HOUGHTON — The Micah Stipech era of Houghton High School hockey is off to a great start.

After two wins last weekend, the Gremlins were back at it Tuesday night at home against Marquette, which is competing in MHSAA Division 3 this season instead of Division 2.

Houghton was nowhere near as sharp as it had been Saturday against Hartland, but the effort they put forth got better as the game went along, finishing the night with a 2-0 win at Dee Stadium.

After a mercy-rule win over Escanaba to start the season, Stipech feels his team has seen plenty of different situations in just three games.

“We’ve been through a little bit of everything here this year and now this was a game where we did not bring our ‘A’ game to start,” he said. “We were on such a high Saturday, and I guess it was my fear that we would come out with low energy, and boy, did we.”

Both of Houghton’s goals came on power plays in the first and second periods.

“Our first period was rough and it was really concerning,” Stipech said. “But we did improve throughout the course of the game with our energy and our compete level.”

Despite giving up two goals, Marquette coach Doug Garrow felt his team did a solid job with its penalty kill. MSHS killed off more than 90 seconds of a two-man disadvantage late in the first period, while also killing off a major penalty without giving up a goal on either situation.

“I thought our penalty kill did well, even though we gave up two power-play goals,” he said. “When you look at it, 5-on-5, we played with them all night long. We just have to stay out of the box and do a better job of killing.

“There’s a few things that happened on the penalty kill that we have to address, but I thought we did a pretty good job of slowing them down. They came through the neutral zone with speed, but we forced dumps, and we didn’t make it easy for them to gain the zone.”

Houghton scored on the game’s first power play just 5:43 in. Sophomore winger Connor Arko got the puck to junior winger Grant Schaible near the top of the left circle. He fired a wrister through traffic for the goal.

Arko factored into the second Houghton goal as well. He got a pass from senior defenseman Connor Raffaelli, and drove down the ice on an odd-man rush on the power play. He then wristed a shot that beat Marquette goaltender Cole Kelly to the far side of the net 5:58 into the middle frame.

When Arko wasn’t chipping in offensively, his line, with junior center Jay Halonen and senior winger Tanner Flachs, made life miserable for Marquette’s top line all night long.

“That line did some good things,” said Stipech. “They’re an honest line, him, Jay Halonen and Tanner Flachs, and they matched up most of the night with Marquette’s first line. They were big for us tonight.”

Garrow felt that his team learned a lot from their first two games of the season, facing Houghton after battling Birmingham Brother Rice downstate in its season opener. He liked his team’s effort level throughout Tuesday.

“I thought it was a good game,” he said. “I mean, obviously, Houghton’s a more skilled team than we are. They carried the play. I thought, though, we competed pretty hard, to be honest with you. I thought it was a good game.

“If we can just continue to play with that kind of intensity, game in and game out, I think we’ll be OK.”

Garrow was especially happy with the play of Kelly in goal, especially once the team lost captain Nash Riipi and alternate captain Connor Stade to injuries in the first period. Kelly finished with 28 saves.

“I thought our goaltending, Cole, played extremely well,” Garrow said. “(He) kept us in it.”

At the other end of the rink, senior goaltender Bryant Lee made seven key saves as part of his 20-save shutout, including multiple first-period, odd-man rushes off Houghton turnovers.

Marquette hosts Escanaba at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Lakeview Arena.