The Komets needed to shake off the previous seven games and they did so Friday night with a 3-1 victory over the Kalamazoo Wings in front of 7,664 fans at Memorial Coliseum.

"We’d had a long last seven games. We were 2-5. It feels good to get a good 60 minutes of hockey in and to win a game," said rookie defenseman Cody Corbett, who netted his first goal of the season in the first period with a slap shot from the blue line during a power play.

"You go in to practice every day and keep pushing, keep pushing, keep shooting pucks at the net and find lanes and practice. The boys had a good screen in front of the net and I just wound up and got a greasy one – 5-hole."

It didn’t hurt matters for the Komets (7-5-0) that they didn’t have to face goaltender Joel Martin, who has given them fits since 2004. Instead, they faced 24-year-old Clay Witt, who entered the game with only 24 saves on 31 shots and then stopped 34 of 37 for the Wings (7-8-1).

"Overall, we did enough tonight to deserve to get the two points. That’s the No. 1 thing: At the end of the night, we needed to deserve this, and feel good enough about our game, to get the two points. We didn’t just want to come in here and get lucky," said Komets coach Gary Graham, who lauded the players’ solid play in the third period but bemoaned the abundance of penalties.

Kalamazoo scored on 1 of 6 power plays. Fort Wayne, which has been ravaged by injuries and the call-ups of players to the higher-level American Hockey League, was 1 of 5.

After Corbett’s goal, Kalamazoo tied it with a power-play goal of its own; Ludwig Blomstrand wristed the puck from 30 feet out and it sailed high at 13:42 of the first period on goaltender Pat Nagle, who stopped 26 of 27 shots.

It took only 41 seconds for Fort Wayne to answer with a goal from Kyle Thomas, who caught Witt too far out from his net and sent the puck just inches inside the goal line before Wings defenseman Steve McCarthy swept it away.

Early in the second period, there was a fight between Fort Wayne’s Jordon Southorn and Kalamazoo’s Tyler Shattock. Mike Embach made it 3-1 with a shot from the right circle, during a 2-on-2 rush with Fort Wayne short-handed, 12:53 into the second period.

The Komets play today at Toledo for the first time since losing the seventh game of the North Division Finals there last spring.

In the only meeting so far this season, the Komets won 4-1 on Nov. 6 at the Coliseum.

And on Sunday, the Komets play at Brampton, Ontario, and it will be the first chance for Beast coach Colin Chaulk to take on the Komets, who he captained to five championships.

It will also be Komets’ first game north of the border since 1998, when they played at Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the International Hockey League.

Notes: Referee Nic Leduc worked his first game at the Coliseum since a scary incident last season. He was supposed to work a game at Fort Wayne but had been found in a hotel room in Des Moines, Iowa, where it’s believed he had fallen down and suffered a skull fracture that landed him in intensive care. "It’s pretty cool to be back out there," Leduc said. "Right after the accident, I was feeling bad and after the summer, the grass became more green." ... The ECHL announced that Orlando-based linesman Camden Nuckols died at 25 this week after an undisclosed illness.

jcohn@jg.net