Whew, there's a lot to discuss after the Komets’ 4-2 victory over the Toledo Walleye to begin Fort Wayne’s 66th season of professional hockey.

-- Let’s start with the Dennis Kravchenko fight that seemed to have more people talking in the Fort Wayne locker room than even the Tyson Fawcett hat trick. The Komets felt that fight was huge because it wrestled momentum away from the Walleye. “That fight was huge. Kravy stepped up big for us because they kind of had the momentum at that point. He put a stop to it and kind of put us back on the right track,” Fawcett said. Coach Gary Graham had this to say of the fight with A.J. Jenks: “The game really changed when Kravchenko stuck his head in there. The team responded after that.”

-- Fawcett was a player who always seemed to burn the Komets while with Evansville. “I guess the arena just loves me here. The fans were great. The atmosphere was unbelievable tonight. It kind of got me fired up,” said Fawcett, who scored from the left dasher boards, on a breakaway and by banking the puck off defenseman Davis Vandane.

-- The only person who might disagree about the fans tonight was Pat Nagle, who strangely got booed when he came in for Toledo in the second period. Nagle, who starred for Fort Wayne for three seasons, only signed with Grand Rapids/Toledo after Fort Wayne decided to move on from him, so I wonder if the fans think it was his choice to leave.

-- Nagle’s replacement, Michael Houser, was terrific with 25 saves. He stopped three shots at the end of odd-man rushes. He pointed out that the Komets wanted to come out hard early, knowing Toledo had played on Friday night in Moline, Illinois, and then traveled the 5-plus hours to get here. “It was a good crowd definitely, probably the best I’ve seen in this league,” said Houser, who played for Cincinnati last season and is with the Komets through the new affiliation with the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes. “I thought we did exactly what we had to do. We knew they played (Friday) night, and the first 10 minutes were going to be big. To take a 3-1 lead was big. We gave a little of it back in the second period, but it was bend-don’t-break and we weathered the storm.”

-- The Komets lost 5 of 6 games to Toledo in the regular season and 4 of 5 in the playoffs, but Graham didn’t care to talk about the importance of setting the tone against the Walleye in that respect. “We like winning in front of 10,000 people,” he said.

-- Graham couldn’t deny that Toledo has a dangerous power play – the Komets’ penchant for penalties did them in against the Walleye last season – so he was excited abut killing off all four power plays the Komets faced tonight.

-- Other players who stood out: Cody Sol, who was good defensively and attacked offensively at the appropriate times to get two assists; Jamie Schaafsma, who intercepted passes and looked really solid; Jason Binkley, who like Sol was plus-3 and had one of the bigger checks of the night; Justin Hodgman, who set up the final Fawcett goal; Daniel Maggio, who just joined the team this week and had an assist.

-- It wasn’t a great night for the officials, who missed a couple of icings, too many men on the ice and offsides.

jcohn@jg.net