It wasn’t the start the Whitehorse Huskies were hoping for.

After the first 20 minutes of the senior hockey team’s new season, the Huskies trailed the Whitecourt Wild 4-1 in front of 400 faithful at Takhini Arena Saturday night.

The host squad, sponsored by Nuway Crushing Ltd., eventually found their game and made things interesting, but ultimately ran out of time in a 7-6 loss.

Early penalties to defenceman Burt Stephens (elbowing) and captain Evan Campbell (hooking) resulted in goals for the Wild, with the hulking Greg Shrode and slick Lyndin Lewis slipping pucks past Huskies goalie JJ Gainsforth.

A beautiful deke by former pro Matt Moffat had the Wild up 3-0 before the Huskies knew what had hit them.

Kane Dawe got the Huskies on the board, but Lewis’s second of the game saw the Wild up 4-1 entering the first intermission.

Huskies centre Kevin Petovello took the game into his own hands in the second period, however, to pull the home team to within one.

His first goal came on a spectacular deke, and he scored despite drawing a hooking penalty on Wild blue-liner Matt Gann.

Petovello’s second goal, scored via a quick wrister from the slot, saw the Wild call a 30-second timeout.

Whitecourt then scored three straight goals – a hat trick snipe from Lewis, followed by markers from Mitch Ternan and Adam Boytinck – to make it 7-3 after two.

The Huskies poured on the pressure in the third, getting goals from Ryan Gleason, Colin Dendys and Ted Stephens to close the gap to 7-6.

But that was as close as they would get.

Petovello was named Huskies “top dog” after the game.

“It was our first two games of the year, and you could tell early,” the 29-year-old former pro said Sunday. “It took us some time to get going and figure some things out. ... As the game rolled on, we started to gel a bit.”