The Milwaukee Admirals recorded a 3-0 shutout against the Charlotte Checkers Tuesday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
Juuse Saros picked up his second shutout of the season by stopping all twenty-six shots on goal. This comes on the heels of Marek Mazanec’s twenty-three save shutout of the Iowa Wild on Sunday to make it back-to-back shutouts. That’s the first back-to-back shutouts from the Admirals since January 9-10, 2015 when Mazanec and Magnus Hellberg did the job. Like last season, the second of those two shutouts came against the Checkers.
After what could be considered a dud of a first period for both sides the game opened up in the second period and saw the Admirals notch the opener.
Matt White caught the Checkers in a bad change which put Max Görtz behind their defense. White’s pass hit Görtz in stride and the Swede’s shot powered through Checkers goaltender Drew MacIntyre. The puck squeaked through his gear but didn’t stray too far. Fortunately Görtz followed in to push the puck behind to record his tenth goal of the season.
The Görtz-White combo linked up once again for the Admirals second goal of the second period. The Checkers goaltending has had a rough go of things coming into tonight and this goal was an example of that. White fired a wrister from behind the cage that ricocheted off of MacIntyre’s shoulder and up into the top of the net. The goal for White was his seventh of the season.
The third period saw Juuse Saros hold the fort just long enough for the Admirals to take the empty net goal and seal things off. Kevin Fiala made a crafty move to avoid a stick check before wiring a wrister into the empty cage for his tenth goal of the season.
Saros made it back-to-back shutouts for the Admirals. His game was calm and consistent throughout the night and appeared to get better later into the game. In total he stopped twenty-six shots on goal to record his second shutout of the season. The Admirals now have six shutouts between their two goaltenders on the season.
Ramblings: Since the Milwaukee Admirals played on Sunday there were no roster moves made in the organization. Tonight’s line combinations were: White-Hodgson-Åberg, Reinhart-Sissons-Gaudreau, Fiala-Kamenev-Görtz, Devane-Girard-Payerl, Oligny-Elliott, Näkyvä-Mullen, Alm-Aronson. Tonight’s scratches were both healthy: Joe Pendenza and Trevor Murphy. Tonight’s attendance was 2,780. The Admirals bus for Grand Rapids officially left at 10:30 PM following the conclusion of the game.
What was your take from tonight’s game? While the Admirals offense hasn’t exactly been at its finest these last three games what can be said of their defense?
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Like I said after Matt White’s goal, “Drew MacIntyre? More like, Drew BACK-Intyre! Amirite!?!?”
…. yeah, my wife didn’t find it funny either
Mark: I laughed! haha
Solid wins from solid play. Not crazy good offensive play but we know what this team is able to do. It’s good to see our defense really stand tall and hold serve. Tonight will be interesting to see how they play on short rest. I’m not expecting alot they haven’t played this much lately.
Jon: My bar is set low for tonight’s game for sure. Grand Rapids, yes they’ve been on a bit of a bad run – but they’ve dominated the Admirals in their own barn and get the added benefit of some rest and an Admirals team that should be knackered having played this many games with a rapid fire travel to get to town, sleep on a bus, and then play. I figured they were going to start Saros last night so they could lean heavily on Maz tonight. They’ll be banking on Maz’s white hot form to see them through this game. I’m just hoping that enough gets done in front of him to perhaps snag a point… this could either be a low scoring grind like the last two games or we could get a thud of a loss. I’ll happily take a 6-1 win… but I don’t see that happening.