The Admirals won 3-1 against the Lake Erie Monsters Friday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. The great form that the Admirals displayed yesterday in Iowa spilled into tonight’s contest. Juuse Saros was terrific in net as he narrowly missed out on completing two shutouts in two days. It is the first time this season the Admirals have picked up consecutive wins.
“We talked this morning about building on yesterday,” said Milwaukee Admirals head coach Dean Evason. “We haven’t built on a good win, and we had a real good win in Iowa, and we wanted to build on it. We built tonight and we just want to keep going forward.”
In the first period the Admirals were able to get out in front with a power-play goal. Josh Anderson was called for a trip as the Admirals won a defensive zone faceoff and were looking to breakout. This set the stage for Vladislav Kamenev to pass out from behind the net and into Viktor Arvidsson’s sweet spot on the left wing circle. A powerful slap shot later and the Admirals were up 1-0 through Arvidsson’s second AHL goal of the season.
Directly following the power-play goal there was a scrap. Cody Bass partnered up with Brett Gallant and the two proceeded to clobber one-another with overhand shots. The officials stepped in when Bass’ head remains tucked down for a moment but he responded by telling the crowd to get louder. I score that tilt even. The two were throwing and landing hard shots.
The second period saw yet another nasty incident with the Admirals on the delivering side of it. Conor Allen turned around and slashed Alex Broardhurst heavily and left the former member of the Rockford IceHogs crumpled up on the ice. Allen was handed a five minute major for slashing and a game misconduct. The Admirals would carry on to successfully kill off the five-minute major penalty.
“Our penalty kill took a lot of heat early in the year,” said Evason. “Rightfully so. We weren’t getting the job done. But the guys have really bought in. [Stan Drulia] and [Scott Ford] do a great job teaching and they’re buying in to what they want us to do. And we’re getting the job done.”
What’s a hockey game without a little controversy? Max Reinhart looked to have scored his second goal of the season but the officials said otherwise. Battling in front of netminder Anton Forsberg was Jamie Sifers and Bass. The two spilled into the goaltender and, as the call would state, incidental contact would cause the no goal decision. Was Bass bumping into Forsberg or was Sifers bumping Bass into his own goalie? That’s the question left from that play.
The officials wouldn’t be done getting into the thick of things just there. It looked like Jamie Devane and Oleg Yevenko were about to duke it out behind the Lake Erie net. Rather than allow them to throw down the referees pounced on the two. Yevenko would keep forcing the issue on Devane and it led to all parties crashing into the back of the net. They opted to not call for fighting majors but assessed matching roughing minors with Yevenko earning himself a misconduct for continuing the altercation.
With four-on-four hockey in play Anthony Bitetto raced up from the blue line and down the left wing to score his first goal of the season. Bitetto’s shot from close range received a helpful redirect off of a stick by a diving T.J. Tynan which sent the puck straight through Forsberg’s five hole. Colton Sissons picked up the secondary assist on the goal which meant him setting a new career high with a six game point streak.
“I think the initial play was to make the pass to [Arvidsson] and I think he probably would have scored,” said Anthony Bitetto after the game. “It kind of worked out either way. The guy made a good play trying to get his stick there but unfortunately for them it went in. Always good to get a goal like that.”
The fight that was too hot for television, and the second period, was allowed to run its course in the third period with 3:37 left in the game. Devane and Yevenko got into a jab fest and were allowed to keep on throwing until the two had no more gas in the tank to throw.
A late penalty against Kristian Näkyvä put the Monsters on the power-play with 2:36 left in regulation. Unfortunately for Juuse Saros his bid for consecutive shutouts would end there. A point shot by Daniel Zaar hit net front traffic and allowed Broadhurst to score from the rebound to make it a 2-1 game off his first goal of the season. Saros shutout streak ended at a final line of 125:55 of ice time over the course of three games.
The Monsters were in empty net and extra attacker mode in the final minute of play. He had a goal waved off earlier but he made it count as the dagger in this contest. Reinhart would be the man to bury the empty netter and pick up goal number two on the season. The Admirals would win 3-1 and record their first consecutive wins this season.
Ramblings: Vladislav Kamanev returned to the lineup after completing his two-game suspension for a boarding incident against Matt Fraser of the Manitoba Moose on 10/29/15. Stevie Moses also returned from his team suspension for a violation of team rules that kept him from traveling with the team to Iowa yesterday. Tonight’s line combinations were: Arvidsson-Sissons-Moses, Görtz-Reinhart-Bass, Åberg-Kamenev-Payerl, Devane-Girard-Gaudreau, Alm-Bitetto, Allen-Oligny, Näkyvä-Aronson. Scratches tonight for the Admirals were all healthy: Kevin Fiala, Eric Robinson, and Trevor Murphy. After the game Anthony Bitetto was informed that he will be leaving to rejoin the Nashville Predators one-day and one-game early in his two week (fourteen consecutive days) conditioning assignment.
Reactions from this game? Is this the Milwaukee Admirals team that we’ve been waiting to come to the surface since the start of the season?
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I was glad that a good sized crowd was loud and saw an Admirals win!
Thanks to all of the veterans that were present. I have never seen a Medal of Honor recipient in person before. Gary George Wetzel was a helicopter door gunner in Viet Nam on January 8, 1968. He was severely wounded by 2 enemy rockets when his helicopter was under heavy fire in a landing zone. Despite being ejected from his helicopter and losing his left arm, he returned to his post and fired his machine gun at the enemy until he silenced all of the automatic weapons fire pining down the US troops in his vicinity and inflicting heavy casualties upon them. He then attempted to assist other wounded Americans despite his own injuries.
You make me proud to be an American, Specialist Fourth Class (then Pfc.), U.S. Army, 173d Assault Helicopter Company, Gary Wetzel.
adsfan: 6,153 in attendance tonight and everyone was into this game. Loved it. Makes for such a great atmosphere when a crowd is even belting out hurrahs for penalty kills. Great stuff. And I hear the attendance for the AM game on Wednesday should be around the 11,000 figure.
I was again displeased with the refs. This was my 5th game this season and the officiating has been substandard in four of them. Oligny shoots the puck at the LE net and gets called for unsportsmanlike. I never heard a whistle as the crowd was very loud at the time. Ref #46 was waving his arms by the goal to stop play. Two LE players skated over and started punching Oligny in the head. Only the one penalty on Milwaukee was called.
“The second period saw yet another nasty incident with the Admirals on the delivering side of it. Conor Allen turned around and slashed Alex Broardhurst heavily and left the former member of the Rockford IceHogs crumpled up on the ice.” This happened near me and I had a good view of it from the beginning. Allen was chasing after the loose puck in the SE corner. Broadhurst saw Allen catching up to his teammate; both Allen and the other LE player were trying to get to the puck. Broadhurst turned away from the puck and into Allen’s path to impede (interfere) with him. The contact knocked Allen a little off balance and he turned to his left and slashed Broadhurst on the wrist after he was spun around. Once again, only penalties on Milwaukee. Broadhurst doesn’t get called for interference, which started the whole incident.
Yevenko went behind the net after the whistle and hit Devane up high with his stick. Devane immediately punched the much bigger Yevenko in the jaw. The two linesmen behaved like idiots by crashing into the two players behind the net. Devane had his head rammed into the metal bar on the back of the goal. I give Yevenko props for being willing to fight Devane face to face in the third period. Yevenko got the misconduct because he punched one of the linesmen in the face during the original tussle with Devane.
For some reason, the LE D-men played most of the game by hitting Admirals players with their sticks, usually from sternum height up to the head. They were never called for high sticking.
That is poor defending when you use your stick instead of your feet!
Period 3: Tynan turned and intentionally boarded Bitetto, who could have broken his neck on that play, just like Kerry Clark. The refs called it 2 minutes. It should have been 4 or 5 minutes. Near the end of the game, Nakyva hit one of the LE players from behind as he was changing direction and bending over towards the end boards. Nakyva was aiming for the right shoulder and got him in the back instead. Nakyva received 2 minutes, the same as Tynan did for his viscous hit on Bitetto.
I felt that the two didn’t compare, but calling something on Nakyva was one of the few times that the refs didn’t totally mess up.
The Admirals disallowed goal was #4 that I have seen in person so far. Bass tried to follow the puck to the goal. The LE D-man ran into his own goalie and pinned him to the post. Bass was on the outside of the jam up. Maybe he could have moved. Maybe his hands were pinned down. Contrast that with the LE goal. Player #22 for LE was standing in the middle of the crease belonging to Juuse Saros, cutting him off from trying to defend the goal on the far side before the puck was shot in from that far side by Broadhurst, the guy who acted like his arm was broken by Allen in the second period. That goal was allowed. Head Coach Dean Evason talked to one of the refs after that LE goal for an extended time. Neither ref reviewed the LE goal. You could make a case that both goal decisions were incorrect.
Ref #46, Dave Lewis, made a lot of questionable calls in the game. Ref #2, Jarrod Ragusin, never made any calls that I remember. Felix Gerard was knocked down behind the LE goal about 1/2 way through the third period. When he tried to get up, one of the LE players hammered him on the back with a crosscheck, knocking him back down on the ice. Ragusin was 10 feet away and was looking at the crosscheck. He didn’t call it. He didn’t call anything the entire game! What a mess!
adsfan: I was also a bit confused by some of what the officials were doing last night. Oligny being given an unsportsmanlike for shooting on goal as the whistle blew for a questionable offsides was ridiculous. That’s an area where you let the players police the game a bit and it appeared they were going to leave it at that when three black shirts ganged up on him. Nothing for that – just Oligny’s shot as the whistle blew. Add to that the Devane/Yevenko no fight in the second period and it seemed like they were taking the players say-so away from them. I like seeing the players get to police some of what happens on the ice. Take that away from them and everything builds like a powder keg. Lots of chippy stuff went down following the no fight and I pin that players trying to find where on Earth the line is for them to be able to get their messages sent across.
adsfan: Also, Evason was insistent that I go back and watch the tape of Allen’s major penalty. He was clearly irked by what went down.
i would like to see more scoring from the defensemen the admirals are starting get together after a slow start