Underdog Lake Erie Monsters come together to capture Calder Cup

Oliver Bjorkstrand scored the OT winner with 1.9 seconds remaining and the Lake Erie Monsters defeated the Hershey Bears for their first Calder Cup in 52 years.

The Lake Erie Monsters became a team first before ending up as champions.

One moment captured that sense of camaraderie shortly after the Monsters won the Calder Cup this past Saturday night, finishing off a sweep of the Hershey Bears with a 1-0 overtime win before 19,665 fans jammed into Quicken Loans Arena.

A reliable defenceman all season long, John Ramage had been injured in the first game of the playoffs. That upper-body injury ended Ramage’s season, pushing him into the role of team cheerleader after playing 68 regular-season games while his teammates battled for nearly two more months, sweeping three of four series along the way.

So teammate Josh Anderson brought Ramage along with him to skate the Calder Cup, helping his injured teammate to lift the trophy.

“He was so great for us, and I wanted to help him hold up the Cup and make him feel a part of it,” Anderson explained.

“I just can’t put this into words. This is the best moment of my life, winning with all of these guys. I haven’t played with a better group of guys.”

Anderson, a prime candidate to secure a full-time job with the parent Columbus Blue Jackets this fall, could relate to Ramage’s plight. His own upper-body injury had put him out of the line-up for Games 2 and 3 against Hershey. A long break before Game 4 allowed Anderson to heal enough to dress for the Cup-clinching victory.

The championship was the first for Cleveland hockey fans since 1964 and also the first for a Columbus Blue Jackets affiliate.

Experienced Craig provided leadership
Leading a young group of prospects was 34-year-old captain Ryan Craig, a veteran of 198 NHL games who is winding down his playing career on an AHL contract.

Craig has not dressed for an NHL game since the 2010-11 season, but he carries the credibility of an NHL resume into the Lake Erie dressing room. Craig, whose pro career began in 2003, had never won a pro championship over 13 seasons.

“Ryan Craig and [33-year-old defenceman] Jamie Sifers told us they had never been this far,” said 18-year-old defenceman Zach Werenski, the eighth overall pick by the parent Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2015 NHL Draft. “I think for us young kids, it really hit home that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we have to take advantage of it.”

“We’ve got an unbelievable captain in Ryan Craig. You can’t get better than that. He has been around this league a long time. It’s a really emotional time for him because he hasn’t been this far,” said Anderson.

An impressive assembly of youth
Second-year forward Kerby Rychel is yet another key piece of the Blue Jackets’ draft-and-develop rebuilding effort that Columbus general manager Jarmo Kekalainen has orchestrated. Columbus blended a mix of top young prospects with savvy veterans in Craig, Sifers, Steve Eminger and Steve McCarthy to show them the pro way.

Headlining the group, rookie forward Oliver Bjorkstrand settled a loose rebound, flicked a shot past Hershey netminder Justin Peters with 1.9 seconds to go in overtime in Game 4, and has put himself on the brink of an NHL job.

Bjorkstrand, the 2013 third-round pick won the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as the most valuable player in the post-season after piling up 10 goals and six assists in 17 games. The 21-year-old Denmark native also set an AHL record with three overtime goals and tied a league record in potting six game-winning playoff goals.

Sonny Milano, yet another first-round pick in the Lake Erie line-up has a championship on his resume in his first pro season.

In all, 13 Lake Erie players also logged time with Columbus in the regular season.

The Columbus-Lake Erie partnership also sprinkled in dependable role players in Trent Vogelhuber, Alex Broadhurst, and T.J. Tynan to supplement the likes of Werenski, Bjorkstrand, Milano, Rychel, Anderson and an assortment of other intriguing prospects who could make training camp in Columbus very interesting.

“It’s such a close-knit group,” Rychel said. “Everybody hangs out with everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new guy, European, North American, everybody is going to be friends. I just think everything gelled perfectly.”

‘Steady’
“I think we were just steady,” Craig said. “The way we were just steady all year was a testament to our group. We did have our ups and downs yet we were able to get out of our valleys.”

“But that’s [why] you fill it with good people. We find Steve Eminger, who comes in and plays a heck of a role for us. Steve McCarthy, that guy works as hard as anybody and didn’t play a playoff game. But that sets the tone for our group. That’s the selflessness we talk about, and that’s why we’re holding the trophy.”

However, the Monsters went well beyond steady once March arrived, and they carried that pace straight through the playoffs. They won 24 of their final 28 games, ended their Calder Cup run by winning nine consecutive games and finished 15-2 in the post-season.

Overlooked
But for all of the Monsters’ playoff success, they spent much of the season being overlooked. All season long, talk mostly centred on the regular-season champion Toronto Marlies, the defending Calder Cup champion Ontario Reign, and the Grand Rapids Griffins’ gaudy winning streaks.

Where the spotlight rarely visited was Cleveland and the Monsters, even though their 97 points placed them fourth overall in the AHL. Lake Erie and their collection of top prospects, reliable AHLers and veterans went about their business quietly.

But in the end, the Monsters captured the only honour that matters.

“That’s fine with us,” Craig said of his team’s low profile. “We ended up where we wanted to be.”

Still, Monsters head coach Jared Bednar acknowledged that his dressing room did not overlook being overlooked by the rest of the AHL.

“The most important thing for us was what we thought in the room, and our belief system was strong,” Bednar explained. “We felt like we were a good team and could accomplish something special if we all dug in.”

“I think that was part of what drove us, the underdog card. We used that in the room. I think our guys took it personally. We finished [fourth] in the league, and teams are talking about everybody else but us, I think we used that just as added motivation.”

Spotlight arrives
It all ended with the Monsters, an AHL club playing in a major-league city, receiving major-league treatment for their Cup-clinching victory in front of a rowdy crowd that roared with every scoring chance, save and hit for nearly 80 minutes of hockey in Game 4 before finally putting Hershey away for good. Lake Erie led the AHL in playoff attendance at 11,045 per game, and their win Saturday came before the second-largest crowd in AHL playoff history.

“I think this was the top of the mountain with this building rocking, the biggest crowd in Ohio hockey history, and everything that came with it,” Craig said. “The community has embraced our group, our team, our style, what we bring.”

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