After a rough outing last night against Chicago, the Admirals rebounded with a big win on the road.  Timely scoring, solid goaltending, and good special teams play late in the game were key in the Ads 3-1 victory over the Grand Rapids Griffins Saturday night.

The win marked the 23rd straight regular season road game with at least a point in the standings for the Admirals.

The Ads trailed after one period, thanks to a Gustav Nyquist power play goal 3:24 into the game.  But productive start of the second period changed the momentum in a hurry.

After Juuso Puustinen created a turnover at the Admiral blue line, Michael Latta was able to beat Jordan Pearce glove side just 1:05 into the second period.

Ben Ryan scored his first AHL goal 1:26 later,.  Ryan Flynn was doing some hard work behind the net, and fed Mark Van Guilder in the slot.  MVG’s shot was saved, but the rebound went to Ryan at the left post.

A little less than 3 minutes later, the Griffins were awarded a penalty shot after Chris Conner picked Roman Josi’s pocket, and Josi stymied the breakaway in an illegal kind of way.  On the attempt, Conner tried to go five-hole on Jeremy Smith, but the shot ended up going off of Smitty’s knee and stayed out of the net.  The Admirals ended the period with the 2-1 lead.

The Ads had a slow start to the third period, as they didn’t get their first shot until they were on a power play just over 7 minutes into the game.  And much like last night, that power play was negated early thanks to a Chris Mueller interference penalty in the offensive zone.  19 seconds later, Ryan Thang was called for a hooking penalty.

While on that 4-on-3 penalty kill, the Griffins were awarded their second penalty shot attempt of the game (first time in team history they had two in a game).  The call was that Kyle Wilson gloved the puck in the crease.

Smitty came up huge again, stopping Tomas Tatar on his attempt.

59 seconds after the Mueller and Thang penalties were killed off, the Admirals went on the power play thanks to a slash Taylor Beck drew from Gleason Fournier.  And Roman Josi scored his first of the year to make it a 3-1 lead.  His shot from the top of the right circle beat Pearce.

The Griffins took another penalty as the third period was winding down, so there wasn’t much of a last minute offensive flurry.

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Stortini was back, Champagne was scratched.  Taylor Aronson returned to the lineup, replacing Scott Valentine.

Smitty was named the #1 star of the game, and deservedly so….do you think he’ll start Sunday against San Antonio?

 

Last weekend, turnovers were the ultimate culprit of an Admirals 6-3 loss to the Wolves.

It was a similar story tonight.

The Admirals spotted the Wolves a 5-0 lead before losing again by a 6-3 score.  The win was the 4th in a row for the Wolves, who are playing some pretty good hockey right now.

Credit the Wolves for finishing.  But the Admirals can’t make things so easy for them.  Here’s Coach Muller.

– Sloan had the first turnover that led to a goal.
– Ellis had a pair of turnovers that turned into goals.
– Bartley with the yonking penalty to create a 5-on-3 power play for Chicago that they ended up converting on.
– Engren?  Had so little faith in leaving the puck for Ellis, he played it himself and passed right to Duco for a shorthanded goal.  Okay, it wasn’t exactly like that….we’ll let Atte describe what happened.

Coach Muller in his pre-game chalk talk with the season ticket holders talked about how a lot more mistakes are made on the ice in the AHL, and they don’t always cost you like they would at the NHL level.  Tonight, they certainly did.

The Admirals outshot the Wolves 13-5 in the third period (according to the shot counter), ad carried most of the play. Juuso Puustinen had a pair of goals.  After I made fun about the Hockey’s Future writer earlier this week for saying that Puustinen plays a Hornqvist kind of game, there he was down in front of the crease for both of his goals.

So it’s going to be a long bus-ride to Grand Rapids tonight.  You may recall that the day before the Griffins made their BC debut this year, thay had a rough one at home against Abbotsford.  Then they came into our barn and pretty much dominated the Admirals.  Milwaukee now has the chance to return the favor.  Here’s the message to the team from the coach.

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Lines started out:

Bourque – Mueller – Thang
Beck – Latta – Puustinen
Flynn – Van Guilder – Wilson
Champagne – Lajunen – Ryan

Smitty in goal, relieved shortly after his fourth goal against by Atte Engren.

Stortini’s arm was sliced in the Oklahoma City game last weekend.  Needed some stitches, and needs a little time to heal.  That’s why he wasn’t out there tonight.

Discussion:

-For those of you that were at the chalk talk, what did you think of the Coach?  Did you like his style better than Lane’s?
– Ready to not see the Wolves for another three weeks?
-Think the Admirals will rebound well tomorrow?

The fourth time was the charm for the Chicago Wolves. In their fourth meeting with the Admirals, the Wolves capitalized on a plethora of Milwaukee miscues, and came away with a 6-3 win.

The Wolves shutdown the Admirals offense over the last half of the game, and scored four of their own during that time to take the lead and then pull away in the final minutes.

Were the Wolves that good or were the Admirals that bad?  I think it’s a combination of both.  And Coach Muller says something along those lines.

Scott Ford, of all people, opened the scoring, finishing after some strong play in the offensive zone by Jani Lajunen.  The Fin brought the puck in along the right wing, circled around the net, and tried to hit Gabriel Bourque with a pass in the slot.  Colliding with a Wolf player or two, Bourque couldn’t control the pass, but the puck then came to Ford on the near point.  Bourque kept going straight to the net to screen Matt Climie, and Ford’s shot made it through traffic for his first score of the year.

About 3 minutes later, Stefan Schneider sprung Kevin Connauton on a breakaway, right after the latter’s hooking penalty had expired.  Both Ryan Ellis and Victor Bartley were caught up ice, and couldn’t catch up with Connauton, who beat Jeremy Smith.

Then came a wild second period.

Connauton scored his second of the game, taking a cross-ice pass from Darren Haydar on the power play.  Wide.  Open.

Roman Josi and Michael Latta then connected to tie the game at 2.  Josi brought the puck all the way up ice in that very familar way for him, and tapped a pass over to Latta in the slot for the goal.

Latta scored his second of the game 27 seconds later.  After a Zack Stortini shot from the point didn’t quite make it on Climie, the puck bounced right to Latta in the low slot.

The defense then took the rest of the period off.

Roman Josi, deep in his own zone, made a perfect pass to Nathan Longpre.  After a short-distance give-and-go with Darren Haydar in front of the crease, Longpre scored his third of the year.

Then Tyler Sloan just handed the puck to Mark Mancari at the offensive blue line, springing him on a breakaway.  That one ended up being the game winning goal.

4 goals.  Smith hung out to dry on all of them.  Still, it was a winnable game, and here’s the message Coach told the team in second intermission.

The Ads seemed to have a tough time getting anything going in the 3rd period, and credit the Wolves for that.

Mike Duco had a quasi-empty net goal with 1:27 to play, as Smitty had started to head to the bench, but saw the offense turn the puck over.  Duco’s shot made it just past the stretched out reach of Smitty, as he was trying to get back to the crease.

Mark Matheson added an official empty-netter on a shot that was flipped just in front of the Chicago crease.  The puck just barely beat Scott Valentine into the net.

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Lines

Thang – Lajunen – Bourque
Wilson – Mueller – Puustinen
Flynn – Van Guilder – Beck
Stortini – Latta – Ryan

Josi’s first game. We’ll start with Coach’s assessment.

Personally, I was surprised to see him in action so soon after being cleared to play.  I thought they might have liked him to get his hockey legs back a bit before getting thrown to the Wolves.  But there he was out there tonight.

A mixed bag I think.  Lots of his shots were blocked, and there was his gaffe that led to the game-tying goal.  But we saw some of the things that make Josi Josi — the smooth puck-carrier, the guy that has no panic in his game.  Looks like he still needs to get used to playing with his new defensive partners, Valentine at even strength and Ellis on the power play.  Hopefully it won’t take too long to get some of that chemistry.

Ellis was okay.  He needs to be better than okay.

Yeah, Smith was hung out to dry.  Would have been nice for him to come up with a save or two on those chances, but there were plenty of times he was bailing out his defenders at other points in the game.  Tough one for Smitty.  He deserved a better fate.  The rest of the team didn’t.

Kyle Wilson was invisible.  He was credited with three shots, though.  So I guess the shot counter saw him.

Darren Haydar played like the Darren Haydar we know.

Oklahoma City comes to town tomorrow, so it’s a quick turnaround…which coach says is nice after a game like this one.

Discussion: 

– Thoughts on Josi’s debut? 
– Were the defensive turnovers uncharacteristic, or have the d-men just done a better job concealing them over the season so far? 
– Did you like Valentine’s effort at the end of the game on the empty net goal?
– Do you get the sense with Coach Muller’s quotes so far that he’s never too high after a win or too low after a tough loss?
– For those of you who have seen them on the road…do they look like a different team at home?  Getting too cute with the puck?
– Looking forward to seeing Triston Grant tomorrow?  Think he would drop the gloves against Fordo?
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