Three lines will keep a hockey club competitive.

Relying on one line won't.

The Midget A Mustangs fought back to pick up a 5-5 tie against ORC Tree Services in the Whitehorse Recreational Hockey League at the Canada Games Centre Thursday night.

The Mustangs first-year line of Matt McCarthy, Trevor Whynot and Tyrell Hope banged in two goals in one shift in the second half to even the score.

"We have three good lines,” Mustangs head coach Jim Stephens said. "All the lines, they can all score goals, and that's unusual. The last two years we struggled with scoring; we've been lucky to get scoring out of maybe one line. You can't win games if you just depend on one line to score.”

The Mustangs, who now have a 5-1-1 record, give equal time to three lines rather than break them down into first, second and third lines.

But if pressed, Stephens said third-year players Trevor Hanna and Chris Vance are the club's top players.

"They're all pretty even,” he said.

Vance and Tyler Wiens also found the net for the Mustangs last night.

The opening frame ended with a 2-2 score line.

The Mustangs added another to start the second, but fell 5-3 mid-way through.

That's when the young players stepped up.

"I think it's really positive, because the first-year guys, as I've mentioned before, they could turn out to be the top players on the team by the end of the year,” Stephens said. "I think they're way ahead of schedule for first-year midgets, so it'll be interesting to see how we do in Abbotsford,” he added of the Remembrance Day weekend midget tournament in B.C.

The Mustangs have been working on power play breakouts in practices after having trouble putting pucks on the net with the man advantage in the club's opening six games.

"We did quite well with that last night,” Stephens said. "The breakout was good.”

Another key to last night's performance was coming from behind and even earning chances to win it, he added.

"The guys didn't give up when we were down 5-3, so that shows the team's got a lot of character to come back and tie it up,” he said.

"We would have liked the win but you're not going to win them all.”