JOYEUX NOEL, MONSIEUR LEMIEUX

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Francis Lemieux’s first career hat trick led the Grand Rapids Griffins to a 6-3 win over the streaking Milwaukee Admirals on Friday in his team’s 500th regular season home game at Van Andel Arena, breaking the Griffins’ year-long drought against their cross-lake rivals.

The Griffins defeated Milwaukee for the first time since Dec. 29, 2007, snapping their eight-game series skid (0-6-1-1) and handing the Admirals their first loss in their last seven outings.

Grand Rapids (15-7-3-3), which improved to 7-1-1-2 in its last 11 home games and 9-2-1-3 overall at Van Andel Arena this season, will look for the weekend sweep when Milwaukee returns for a 7 p.m. engagement on Saturday.

The Admirals (17-8-0-1) opened the scoring just nine seconds into an early 5-on-3 power play, when Mike Santorelli jammed a rebound inside Daniel Larsson’s left post at the 1:59 mark.

Grand Rapids answered at 5:22 on Lemieux’s first goal of the year, as he put Francis Pare’s centering feed behind former Griffin Drew MacIntyre. The Griffins then took advantage of their second power play opportunity of the night to go up 2-1, with Cory Emmerton finishing off a pretty passing sequence from Mattias Ritola and Tom Galvin to beat MacIntyre from the right circle. The goal marked Emmerton’s third in the last five contests after having been denied in each of his first 21 games this season.

Lemieux accounted for the only two goals of the second period, giving the Griffins a commanding 4-1 lead after 40 minutes. He took a long backdoor pass from Pare for an uncontested tap-in from the left doorstep at 3:12, then finished his trick by slipping a seeing-eye wrist shot past MacIntyre from the left circle with 1:51 left in the frame.

Ritola’s wicked slap shot from the right circle 9:14 into the third increased the home team’s cushion to four goals, but Milwaukee’s Ryan Jones broke Grand Rapids’ string of five unanswered goals by tallying from the slot at 16:11, making it a 5-2 game. Darren Helm scored shorthanded into an empty net at 17:35 before Jones notched his second goal in a span of 3:30 for the final margin.

Larsson made 31 stops to improve to 9-3-1 on the season, while MacIntyre finished with 33 saves in the losing effort.

Three Stars: 1. GR Lemieux (hat trick); 2. GR Ritola (goal, assist); 3. GR Pare (2 assists)