(photo credit: Scott Paulus)
Welcome home indeed.
After a rollercoaster of a ten game road trip, the Admirals played their first home game in almost a month on Wednesday night. They spoiled the return of Claude Noel and Jonas Andersson to the tune of a 6-3 victory.
After the long power play drought on the road trip, this marked the second game in a row with a power play goal. 3:18 into the game, Jamie Lundmark got the goal just in front of the goalie, but Andreas Thuresson and Kelsey Wilson deserve a ton of credit as well. After an offensive zone dump-in, Wilson won the chase to recover the puck. He found Thuresson by the right goalpost, who backhanded a perfect pass to Lundmark by the left goalpost.
Coach Lambert liked the way they came out at the start of the game.
47 seconds into the second period, Gabriel Bourque took a long feed from Jon Blum, and cashed on a beautiful breakaway goal. He picked up the pass right at the offensive blue line, deked just in front of the crease, and beat Tyler Weiman with a backhand up top.
And then in a 3:06 minute span, both teams scored twice. Chris Mueller scored his ninth of the year on a great second effort, after his first shot was saved by Weiman’s right pad. Mueller took a couple wacks at the small rebound, and was about to give the Admirals the three goal lead.
That lasted for 19 seconds. Former Admiral Jonas Andersson (pronounced Joe-nus these days, apparently) deked Ryan Thang out of his skates, and had way too much space to operate on a delayed penalty call. His shot beat Dex low.
Jordan Schroeder scored 1:18 later on a goal that I think Dex wants back. Might have been re-directed en route, but it looked like he had a tough time picking it up.
Linus Klasen finished a rush with Chris Mueller to give the Ads their two goal lead back. It was a great hustle play to get behind some out-of-place defensemen, and it’s great to see Klasen score his second in as many games.
In the 3rd period, the Moose found some of their legs, and outshot Milwaukee 12-3 in the final frame. They scored a power play goal at the 9:56 mark on a play that would never have happened if the Admirals defender had been able to clear the puck out of the zone. Instead, the puck was kept in at the point, and Evan Oberg’s shot found the top left corner of the net, past a screened Mark Dekanich.
Mueller got his second of the game, scoring into an empty net. And then Mike Bartlett beat Weiman on a shot that he didn’t seem too interested in stopping with 21 seconds left.
NOTES:
– Steve Begin was a late scratch with an upper-body injury.
– What else does Chris Mueller need to do to get an NHL contract already? Here’s Coach Lambert on his hottest forward right now.
– Sooooooo while we were getting ready to come to the game today, we found out about the Admirals signing center Andrew Lord to a PTO contract. Lord had been playing with Wheeling of the ECHL, and he made his debut tonight. And Dan Gendur made his home debut. Here’s coach Lambert on the new guys.
– Admirals were outshot again, this time by a 30-20 tab. Getting those numbers flipped around is something that coach Lambert says the team needs to work on.
– Our friend “Sutty” was back in press row tonight, and he gives us this great description of the Ford/Maxwell fight. Enjoy.
“About 2 minutes later Ford and Maxwell (not the pig from the Geico commercials going wee wee wee all the way home) got into a fight. Well, they were mostly standing around and they looked to be running their fingers through each other’s hair. But all in all it was called a fight and they both went to the bin for said infraction.”
Welcome back, Sutty. You paint a picture like none other.
OK ROUNDTABLE! Here are some items for discussion:
1. You may or may not have read/heard that Klasen got called out by coach Lambert recently. Seeing him tonight, do you think Klasen played with more detail than he has been?
2. Who had the better deke — Bourque or Andersson?
3. Give me a haiku about Chris Mueller.
4. Simply put — did you like the way they looked? I think it was a pretty good effort considering how shorthanded the team is right now. What do you think?
5. Do you have a favorite Claude Noel moment?
Admirals Roundtable 
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Weee Weee Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
MAXWELL….
That’s funny right there.
1- I think Klasen showed a little more detail tonight, even putting forth in the defensive zone (on at least 2 occasions I counted)
2- I’ll go with the homer pick and say Bourque
3- I need some time to work on that one.
4- Pretty happy with tonight. It was a huge let down to have MTB come and get right back in the game….but the way we kept our foot on the petal was impressive. The new guys didn’t do a whole lot (other than Lords big hit in the corner) but they weren’t a drain on the team by any means.
5- One of the first games I did stats in my first season, apparently Claude chewed Charlie Larsen a new hole after I didn’t credit the Admirals with enough shots in a period. Charlie lightened the blow on me, and in a nice way told me that if the Admirals don’t have a lot of shots, to find a way to make it appear that they have played better.
6- Sutty paints a picture like no other…but can he draw a picture of Mueller for us?
7- First star tonight should go to the guy who runs the cameras….nice to see the skanks out in full force tonight!
Andrew Lord was putting up some of the best checks I’ve seen all season. He looked like a freight train hitting stuffed animals!
The one thing I noticed tonight was that the passing was much better. More passes actually seemed to hit their mark tonight than they usually do.
I will enjoy my frosty!
Since Chris Mueller seems to be doing everything well these days, I bet he could write a haiku himself…
In the last 10 games he has 9 goals and 3 assists and a shootout goal and a couple of fights. In mid-November Lambert said he was turning heads in Nashville, so what are they doing now??
As for how the team looked, for the most part good but didn’t like the way they were just sitting on the lead in the 3rd (again). Was afraid they were gonna cough it up. Glad to see them snap out of it for the last few minutes. Was also surprised at the lack of penalties called.
Favorite Noel moment was a chalk talk in his last season here. He said there was a player he wouldn’t name that was screaming at the team in the locker room. He told him they might have done that where you came from (his last team), but we don’t do that here. Then as he was walking away he came back and said “it was Ramzi Abid.” His last team? Chicago Wolves.
Klassen gave up the puck a couple times in the neutral zone again so I think he missed that detail of his game. He did get back on defense though which was refreshing.
Manitoba is a very fast team. Their quickness caused our guys to have to move the puck. We really couldn’t sit with it too long without a Manitoba player coming at them. As someone said, the passes seemed to be crisper and on target last night. If we came into this game with poor passing we most likely would have lost this game.
Let’s just hope we don’t give up 10 goals to Grand Rapids on Friday like some other teams do… ;)
1. Klasen is looking better. A player like him is always going to have some giveaways. It is just limiting them and being able to recover from those mistakes.
2. Bourque
3. (Disclaimer: First Haiku I’ve ever written. Man there are a lot of rules, I’ll just follow the simply ones)
Mueller started slow;
Lit lamp nine times in last ten;
Big league deal worthy.
4. Looked decent yesterday. I too am not a big fan of being out shot like we did in the third.
5. Don’t really have a favorite moment.
TooManyMenonTheIce
Nice Haiku.
It takes courage to be the first.
Nice home win, wish I could have made it last night.
“The Lord was on our side last night”. That could have been the headline. He smited our enemies several times, especially that one time in the corner!
The Ads had only 3 shots on goal in the third period. The Meese bottled up the neutral zone and the Ads just wanted the puck out of their zone. They had enough goals to win.
Wasn’t this also Parent’s return to Milwaukee? Andersson still can’t play defense!
Chris Mueller can write a haiku using only one syllable.
Now that we have signed Lord, why not go all the way, and sign Satan.
Admiralfreak — So Chris Mueller is the new Chuck Norris? When the boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Chris Mueller.
Wraparound & Adsfan…it’s funny that you bring up the Lord’s name….Sutty was pestering me to put some Lord jokes and puns in the recap, and I was hesitant to do so. Sounds like I chose incorrectly.
Creed — Grand Rapids has been off since last Sunday, so they’ll be rested for sure. But yeah, hope that 10 goal game against Chicago filled their quota for awhile.
Ads&Predsfan – GREAT Noel story.
the boy from buffalo
his stick is true
it’s his time