Doubts surround the Toronto Marlies for the first time this season.
Those doubts centre on both the Marlies and their current predicament in the American Hockey League’s Calder Cup playoffs.
These Marlies have at least one more chance tonight to save seven months of work and extend their season, the third-best in AHL history, after rolling up 114 regular-season points and advancing to the Eastern Conference final.
But it is quite a hole that the Hershey Bears have put the Marlies in with Game 4 of their Eastern Conference final on tap tonight at Ricoh Coliseum. Hershey holds a 3-0 series lead against the regular-season champion Marlies after crushing them, 8-2, in Game 3 at Ricoh Coliseum this past Wednesday.
“We’ve got one hockey game to play tonight,” Marlies coach Sheldon Keefe told Leafs TV. “We need a win, and we need everybody to be in the right frame of mind to get that win.”
If the Atlantic Division champion Bears can put away the Marlies tonight, they will face the Lake Erie Monsters in the Calder Cup final. A Marlies win would put them one step closer toward becoming the fourth team in AHL history to recover from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series. Game 5, if necessary, would go Sunday afternoon. Hershey is pursuing its fifth Calder Cup championship since commencing its affiliation with the Washington Capitals in 2005.
In Game 3, the Bears piled on five third-period goals, two of them shorthanded, to turn a 3-2 second-intermission lead into a rout. Marlies starter Antoine Bibeau departed after allowing four goals before the Bears welcomed Garret Sparks with four more goals. In all, Hershey stacked up seven unanswered goals, five of them in a 7:05 span.
The Marlies’ three consecutive defeats match a season-high that was set immediately after the NHL trade deadline created roster upheaval. The six-goal loss was the Marlies’ largest margin of defeat this season, and they had not surrendered eight goals in a game since Nov. 14, a 9-8 overtime victory against the St. John’s IceCaps.
What has gone wrong
Goaltending has abandoned the Marlies at the worst possible time for them. The Bibeau-Sparks tandem have combined for a .813 save percentage in the first three games of the series.
Keefe admitted Thursday to Leafs TV that goaltending has become a concern.
“It’s a concern, clearly, that both guys have shown that they have been shaken here a little bit,” Keefe said. “It’s a concern. That said, we’ve got guys that both have played extremely well at different times for us, so there’s confidence on that end of it as a team.”
Keefe also confirmed that Bibeau will start Game 4. Despite Bibeau’s struggles and being given two chances in the series, Sparks has not been able to nudge Bibeau out of the crease. Keefe handed Sparks a Game 2 start before returning to Bibeau for Game 3.
“We have confidence in them, and [Bibeau] is going to be great for us [in Game 4].”
But Wednesday went well beyond goaltending.
Toronto’s power play has also gone dormant. Along with the two Game 3 shorthanded goals, the Bears have gone 10-for-10 on the penalty kill. The Marlies’ offence had tormented opponents all season before running into the Bears and goaltender Justin Peters. Toronto has five goals in three games.
An opportunity
For the Marlies, the situation has framed them as a team to be doubted for the first time this season.
“That’s just the reality,” Keefe said in Thursday’s interview. “You go through it all season long. We’re a team that has high expectations. We’re a good team in the city of Toronto. We’ve gotten a lot of attention, and everybody has told us how good we are.
“A lot of expectations come with that.”
“There is not much expectation [from the public] right now. The expectation is that we’re going to lose here. Nobody is giving us much hope, and given the situation that we’re in and how we played [Wednesday], that would be warranted.”
“But there is a nice opportunity here for the guys to really reveal themselves in a positive way, to get themselves off the mat here.”
Keefe also shared some of the message that he delivered to his dressing room.
“We talked with our group,” Keefe explained. “It’s a chance to respond. What do you want to be remembered for? You’re going to be remembered one way or the other here the rest of the way. It’s going to be positive or negative, good or bad, all the way through.”
“You’re going to be remembered how you perform for the remainder of this series starting [tonight].”
Reign over
No longer are the Lake Erie Monsters operating undercover, not after sweeping the defending Calder Cup champion Ontario Reign on Thursday.
Thanks to two goals from Lukas Sedlak, the Monsters polished off the Reign with a 2-1 double-overtime win at Quicken Loans Arena. They held the Western Conference’s regular-season champion to six goals in four games while ringing up 13 tallies against the top defensive team in the regular season.
Sedlak, who signed a one-year contract extension with the Columbus Blue Jackets earlier this week, continued his phenomenal postseason. His eight playoff goals lead the AHL. In his past 23 games, he has piled up 18 markers after managing four goals in his first 44 games of the season.
Monsters netminder Anton Forsberg, who took over the starting job in their second-round series with the Grand Rapids Griffins, extended his excellent run. He is 5-0-0 with a 1.30 goals-against average and a .955 save percentage. Blue Jackets prospect Kerby Rychel, a first-round selection in the 2013 NHL Draft, chipped in two assists in Game 4 in his push for a full-time job in Columbus next season.
Lake Erie has won 20 of its past 24 games and is 11-2 in the playoffs.
In reaching the final, the Monsters also have started to slay some Ohio hockey demons. A Cleveland-based team has not reached a final in any league since 1966 when the AHL’s Barons reached the Calder Cup final. The city’s most recent Calder Cup championship came in 1964.
They also became the first-ever Columbus affiliate to reach a Calder Cup final. The Columbus-Lake Erie affiliation is in its first season.
Either Hershey or Toronto will have home-ice advantage against Lake Erie in the final.
Position filled
Cross an AHL head-coaching vacancy off the list.
The Manitoba Moose filled their bench opening, hiring Pascal Vincent to replace Keith McCambridge. Vincent spent the past five seasons as an assistant coach with the parent Winnipeg Jets.
Before his NHL stint, Vincent logged 12 seasons as a head coach in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles and Montreal Junior. He went 429-313-87 with the two teams, winning the Ron Lapointe Trophy as league’s top head coach in the 2007-08 season.
