A Game 7 Monday was not in the plans for the Toronto Marlies, but the Albany Devils had other ideas.
After the Marlies blew them out twice at Albany in the teams’ second-round Calder Cup playoff series, the Devils rallied in Game 6 on Saturday with a decisive 4-1 win at Ricoh Coliseum. Before the loss, Toronto had outscored Albany 12-3 in their previous two games, even managing to chase Albany goaltender Scott Wedgewood in a 7-2 win in Game 4.
Now the Marlies, the American Hockey League’s regular-season champion with 114 points, could face an even tougher challenge now that they have left the door open for the Devils. According to the Albany website, the Devils might have forwards Jim O’Brien, Brian O’Neill and Mike Sislo back in their lineup Monday.
O’Brien, a cagey centre, has been out since Game 1 with a shoulder injury. Sislo (lower body), who had 27 regular-season goals, has missed the past two games, and O’Neill (lower body) sat out Game 6.
The reward for a win tonight will be a trip to the Eastern Conference final and a date with the Hershey Bears. Hershey, this season’s Atlantic Division title-holder, finally put away the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Sunday with a 3-2 overtime win.
“I feel like our guys are ready,” Marlies head coach Sheldon Keefe told MarliesTV after Monday’s morning skate. “They recognize the opportunity, but they certainly know the challenge as well. We’re going to be prepared, and the guys will be great today.”
“We’re going to need everybody at their best, and I’m confident they will be.”
Certainly the Marlies will need to far surpass their Game 6 performance.
Albany dictated
While the Devils’ response Saturday did not surprise anyone, the flat display from the Marlies surely raised some eyebrows across the AHL. Against a rugged, grinding opponent, Toronto had no answer as Albany forced its style on the hosts. When the Marlies did manage to press, they ran into Wedgewood, who made 34 saves in a rebound performance.
Clearly Keefe felt that way. Sparing in his praise even in the best of times – perhaps in an effort to tamper down the hype that has followed the Marlies all season – Keefe had plenty to say Saturday.
“To put a team like that away is not going to be an easy task,” Keefe told MarliesTV after Game 6. “Our guys just weren’t up for the challenge [Saturday] or nearly competitive enough. I thought we were outworked all over the ice.”
Marlies sniper William Nylander attracted Keefe’s criticism after Game 6. Nylander has been rather quiet against Albany. While he has a goal and two assists in five games, Albany has held him to four shots in his past three games. That output will not cut it, especially against one of the AHL’s top netminders in Wedgewood.
“We need [Nylander] to be a lot more competitive with and without the puck,” Keefe said. “Right now he is foot-off-the-gas quite a bit when we don’t have the puck, and as a result we’re not getting it nearly enough when he is out there, and he is not able to use his strengths.”
Keys to the game
On Monday the Marlies will need to do several things better.
Give the Marlies the puck, and they can punish opponents. But Albany won loose-puck battles, slowed down the Marlies’ dangerous speed and repeatedly clogged shooting and passing lanes. Toronto, a team that likes to create and topped the AHL in goals per game in the regular season, looked frustrated at times by Albany’s relentless approach.
Getting on the scoreboard first and forcing the Devils to open up would also be helpful for the Marlies. Few teams can create momentum from a goal like the Marlies can, and their transition game can be fatal for an opponent that has to play from behind. Albany has scored the first goal in four of the six games so far.
On Monday after the Marlies’ morning skate, Keefe sounded a more enthusiastic message.
“We’re a confident group,” Keefe explained to MarliesTV. “We feel good about our ability to bounce back. We’ve done that already in this series. We faced some adversity early getting down 2-1 and having to respond from that, and the guys did a good job of it.”
Elsewhere…
Along with Hershey, the Ontario Reign are through to the AHL’s final four.
The muscular, in-your-face Reign took out archrival San Diego Gulls in five games in their Pacific Division series. Three of Ontario’s four wins ended up being one-goal decisions. Ontario won a pair of overtime games at San Diego, putting the Gulls in tough.
The defending Calder Cup champion Reign earned some time to rest and heal from a predictably physical series with San Diego and will host the first two games of the Western Conference final this weekend.
What once looked like it would be an efficient and tidy series win for the Lake Erie Monsters may have turned ominous against the Grand Rapids Griffins. Down 3-0 in the series and trailing 4-1 at home in Game 4, the notoriously streaky Griffins stormed back and took a 5-4 win.
Grand Rapids followed that effort by crushing Lake Erie, 6-1, in Cleveland on Saturday night to force a Game 6 tonight.
If the Griffins can take a win tonight, they will position themselves to become the fourth team in AHL history to rally from a 3-0 series deficit. If necessary, the Monsters would host Game 7 in Columbus at Nationwide Arena because of a scheduling conflict at Quicken Loans Arena.
