If Milwaukee does not make the AHL playoff this season, it will be easy to point to one reason why–the Admirals’ abysmal record against Rockford.
On the sixth annual Pedigree Dog Day Sunday afternoon at the Bradley Center, the Ice Hogs made it seven in row over Milwaukee with a 3-2 shootout victory. With the win Rockford now owns a stunning 8-1-0-1 against the Admirals this season and the two points gained ties the Ice Hogs with Milwaukee at 71 in the Western Conference. Both squads stand four points behind the four-way log jam at 75, represented by the sixth through ninth place spots of Charlotte, Rochester, San Antonio and Peoria, respectively.
However, it wasn’t all negative for the Admirals as Brodie Dupont’s goal in the final minute of regulation earned Milwaukee five points out of a possible six on the weekend, making a return to the playoffs a much more feasible proposition than it was three days prior.
Here is Admirals coach Ian Herbers thoughts on the game:
Coming off the bus from Peoria the previous night Milwaukee (65 Games Played, 33-27-2-3–75 points) played desperate, but sluggish at the same time, allowing several odd man rushes against in the first few minutes. That pressure resulted in Rockford (68 GP, 32-29-2-5–71 points) scoring the game’s opening goal eight minutes in as former Admiral and Nashville Predator Wade Brookbank out-muscled his defender and goaltender Atte Engren to put away a loose rebound for his first goal of the season. Former Wisconsin Badger Brian Fahey appeared to make it 2-0 later in the period, but the goal was waved off as Engren was interfered with by a crashing Ice Hogs forward.
Regrouping from that point Milwaukee dominated the rest of the period, and got rewarded for it when Ryan Thang tied the game with 53 seconds left in the first period. It was Mark Van Guilder’s dogged effort that setup the gorgeous play, working his way out from behind the net to hit Thang on the back door with a backhand pass. All the former Golden Domer had to do find the empty net from down on one leg.
Despite a 10-8 deficit in shots during the second period the Ice Hogs were the better team, and a result Rockford restored their one goal lead at 2-1. Three minutes into the middle frame former 2008 11th overall draft pick Kyle Beach was the receiving end of text book setup of their own from Brandon Svendsen and newly minted Rockford forward Terry Broadhurst (recently of Nebraska-Omaha). Both the Admirals defense and Engren over committed to the Ice Hogs forwards in the corner, allowing Beach plenty of room for a one-timed blast.
From that point the Admirals showed plenty of desperation looking for the tying marker. Yet once again Rockford goaltender Carter Hutton foiled just about everything Milwaukee threw at him. As the Admirals took chances Engren made a few key saves of odd man rushes on the other end.
After both teams took timeouts Milwaukee finally got into Rockford’s zone with pressure in the final 40 seconds. The result was Jonathan Blum’s best play of the season in Milwaukee, as he made a seeing eye slap shot pass toward Dupont, which the red hot Admiral deflected into the gaping space of net on the right side of Hutton. Dupont’s equalizer with 31.4 seconds left earned Milwaukee its much needed point.
After a quiet overtime Rockford closed things out in the shootout as both Philippe Paradis and Rostislav Olesz made Engren look like a chew toy with slick moves.
It was certainly an eventful night for Milwaukee’s Finnish netminder:
Milwaukee’s second shooter Kyle Wilson scored on a smooth backhand fake to get the Admirals on the board, but Chris Mueller, Ryan Thang and Taylor Beck all failed to force extra shooters.
So Roundtable . . . Another start for Carter Hutton, and another win against Milwaukee (8-1-0 against the Admirals), but could Dupont’s last minute goal turn the corner for the Admirals confidence against Hutton?
How satisfied are you with five of six points this weekend?
Have your thoughts changed on Milwaukee’s chances for making the playoffs?
Admirals Roundtable 
The Ads had plenty of chances to score, but didn’t finish most of them. It was like Friday’s game. I wish I had a dollar for every time the puck slid through Rockford’s crease. Hutton was more lucky than good today. I think his luck against the Admirals is about to run out.
Five out of six points is great! I think their playoff chances have improved.
All game long I was wondering why are we not taking more shots from the point and getting guys in front of the crease? This is the nashville standard and for much of the game we were trying to be darren haydar and go behind the net and make slick passes but nothing was working. Yes the thang goal was scored in similar fashion but that was more mvg working hard to get the puck and a heads up play to get the puck to thang. The ads looked tired out there for large chunks of the game. And that IS understandable we went from home down to peoria and back home, while rockford got to run circles around houston at home two nights straight and take the brisk bus ride up to play us, they looked crisper out there and that had a lot to do with it. 5 out 6 is almost all you could as of them it coulda been worse and been houston and lost all 3, the ads need to win in regulation on wednesday. The playoffs chances are still there but it still is a large task to ask them to get done.
I agree with frontrowjon-it is a very large task to ask them to make this push but they put themselves in this position. I do agree they looked tired at times but I really can’t blame them at all.
So happy to see Thang & MVG contributing again. I hope its just in time and not too little, too late.
I can’t help it but every time I see Engren in net, I think it’s an automatic loss.
Latta also missed in the shoot-out.
Ads are 1-5-2 in Atte’s last 8 games. Easy to look at that and blame him…but the team has scored over 2 goals just once in those games….of course, the one win (3-2 over Peoria). They’ve scored just one goal in three of those games. I think he’s played better than his numbers suggest of late.
That said, hopefully Smitty can carry the team down the stretch.
Personally, I thought Engren was a hard luck loser yesterday afternoon. He made some great saves on several odd-man chances against. Some of his past efforts maybe haven’t been on par, but Engren matched Hutton save for save on Sunday.
11th place. Nuff said. That’s a mountain too high to climb this late in the season. Went into the weekend in 11th place, picked up 5 of 6 point, end weekend in 11th place. Game over. The playoffs are out of reach. The sooner you embrace that, the less it will hurt.
Hey Pete! Do you realize that the 6th place team (Charlotte) is just 4 points ahead of Milwaukee? That Charlotte has played one more game than Milwaukee so far? That Charlotte has won two of their last 10 games? That Charlotte has to play Milwaukee three times in the next three weeks?
Adsfan, you’re thinking with your heart and not your brain. For one thing, your obsession with Charlotte only accounts for 1 team of the 10 in front of Milwaukee. The other problem is more fundamental. When you sit in 11th place out of 15 teams, there are more teams ahead of you than behind you. Since every game has a winner and a loser, it stands to reason that some of the 10 teams in front of Milwaukee will pick up points no matter who wins or loses the games between them. Worse yet, there will be plenty of games in which some of those 10 teams lose and still pick up a point. In order for Milwaukee to move up the standings, it has to pick up points faster than other teams, meaning that it has to win outright and then hope that certain teams lose outright enough times in the last few games of the season. The math is dicey and the fact that 11th place is only 5 points away from 5th place only speaks to how close the conference is in talent. That’s bad for the Ads, not good as you would suggest. It means a lot of 3-point games, which is bad because the Ads can’t progress forward and leapfrog the teams ahead of them in the standings.
@Wade. I think you may be wrong. My math skills are pretty darn good. If Milwaukee can make it to 86 points, they should be in the playoffs. I am not obsessed with Charlotte. I merely used them as an example of one team that is ahead of Milwaukee. Previous posts have me stating that Milwaukee has a 1 in 3 chance of making the playoffs. That was a calculation, not an opinion!
This website projects the Ads with 83 points and finishing 10th, agreeing with you.
http://www.letsgoamerks.com/2012/02/16/2012-ahl-western-conference-playoff-race-and-projections/
This one shows Milwaukee with a 51% chance to make the playoffs. They could finish 3rd at best, but 5th to 8th are more likely. Seven wins (85 points) should get them in the playoffs.
http://www.sportsclubstats.com/hockey/USA/AHL/Western.html
Milwaukee has 11 games remaining, with a possible 93 points. They only need to catch 3 teams ahead of them. All of the teams ahead of them have played 1 to 3 more games. They play #5 Houston tomorrow night. They play #12 Rockford on Sunday. Mr. Hutton, the subject above, was just called up to Chicago. Maybe that has to due with the BlackHawks debacle against Nashville on Sunday when they gave up 6 goals at home to the Preds. Rockford has a home game on April 13th against Milwaukee. Those divisional games count double if you can deny the opponent any points. However, I suspect that Hutton will be back for the game on 13th. The biggest problem is Peoria. They don’t play Milwaukee, but their playoff chances have decreased 15% to 58%.
Wade Bea… just to play devil’s advocate… the Admirals remaining games are mostly against teams ahead of us in the standings. So if we can win out, we’re taking points away from all of those teams… I didn’t do the math, but if we beat Charlotte 3 times and San Antonio twice, we’ve just gained 10 points and would bump up in the standings. We also have games in hand on all of those teams. If we win the 3 games in hand, we’re already ahead of several teams… moving up to a minimum of 6th and a max of 4th. While the playoff picture doesn’t look good, it’s not as dismal as you make it sound IMO. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not holding my breath for making the playoffs. I just don’t see it as dismal as you do.
Why does hutton always get called up after we play him? Saw he was suited up on the bench tonight vs nj. Like creed said the playoffs are not an easy goal to attain but we are not completely out of it, games in hand always are a good thing. Another good thing if this ads team is serious about playoffs is their final road trip. It gives them a chance to not only chase down team ahead of them but if they do sneak in and want to do something they are going to be on the road quite a bit and facing hostile environments so they get used to it now then they may be better prepared. All they can do is worry about the game in front of them and take care of that and then move to the next.