(Photo credit:  Scott Paulus)

Magnus Hellberg’s confidence has got to be sky high right now.

Hellberg recorded his 9th win in his last 11 games, and the Admirals won a season high fourth game in a row, dropping the Grand Rapids Griffins 3-1 Saturday night.

With the win, the Admirals jump to 9th place in the conference, tied in points with 8th place Oklahoma City…who have played one less game.

Mark Van Guilder opened the scoring with his first goal since February 10th.  Taylor Beck’s shot from the right point had a huge rebound that kicked to MVG, who was skating along the left wing.  From a tough angle, Van Guilder swept a backhand shot around a sliding Chad Billins, and that shot ended up beating Petr Mrazek. (Van Guilder called a “sixth grade changeup” after the game)

The Griffins tied it up about two minutes into the second period, illustrating again why it’s important to win defensive zone face-offs.  Austin Watson lost a defensive zone face-off, and then a good low shot from the top of the left circle by Andrej Nestrasil beat Magnus Hellberg stick-side.

I know there are lots of folks that love to dump on the Milwaukee power play…but they’ve scored a power play goal in four of their last five games.  Juuso Puustinen had the honors tonight, with a shot from the point that went off of the right post and into the net at 10:19 of the second period.

About four minutes later, Triston Grant and Max Nicastro made like a scene from Benny Hill, colliding with each other and falling down.  Josh Shalla picked up the puck and went in on a breakaway.  His shot went 5-hole on Mrazek for his first career AHL goal (he previously scored the game winner in a shootout….also against Mrazek).

Michael Latta grabbed the puck for him.

And then the Admirals threw a parade.  There were floats, high school marching bands, and Admirals players following the parade route to their penalty box.  The officials (the ever popular Shaun Davis and Mark Lemelin) hadn’t called a ton of stuff to that point, but whistled the Admirals at 16:36, 18:24, and 19:18.  The Griffins had a couple of 5-on-3 chances there, but the Admirals did well to kill everything off.  Hellberg was sharp, and shots were being blocked before they made it to him.

What a momentum changer that was…after that last penalty was killed off.

Coming into tonight, the Griffins sported the 3rd best road power play in the league, and had scored a power play goal against the Admirals in all six of their previous meetings.  They went 0-5 tonight.

NOTES:

-Here’s one of Hellberg’s best saves of the game, stopping a short-handed chance in the second period.

– Admirals dressed seven defensemen again…same lineup as Wednesday night.  There’s a good chance Mike Liambas will be ready to go next weekend.

– Admirals now 14-8-0-1 when scoring a power play goal.

– Griffin’s five-game win streak is snapped.  Admirals lead season series against the division leader 4-3, with one game left in Grand Rapids on April 12th.

– Austin Watson….now 16 straight games without a goal.  Hope he snaps out of it next weekend.  Had 8 shots on goal tonight, though.  For a team that sometimes tends to pass up shots, it’s nice to see a crooked number like that from a guy.

Scoreboard watching:

The Rivermen did us a favor and shutout the IceHogs 4-0….Andre Bouvet-Morrissette netted his first AHL goal in that one.  Toronto dropped Rochester 6-1, and that helps us too.  Even though we don’t play Rochester during the regular season, we’re chasing them in the conference standings, and sit just two points behind them now.  We’re just two points out of 6th place.

(Photo credit:  Scott Paulus)

(Editors note:  There will be no Uranus jokes in this recap.  There were enough at the game for our quota to be filled for awhile…but it was silly and fun.  I enjoy the over-the-top humor.  Hope you enjoyed it too.)

For the third time in his last ten appearances, Magnus Hellberg was perfect.  He stopped all 30 shots he faced tonight for his third shutout of the season, and the Admirals won their third in a row, defeating the Peoria Rivermen 2-0 on Wednesday night.

Coach Evason thought the team was getting great looks over the course of the night, but he tips his hat to Peoria goaltender Mike McKenna for keeping the game as close as it was.

“We had to make perfect shots tonight to beat him.  He was absolutely on fire tonight.  It was a big goal to get that second one.  He was in the zone for sure…we had so many chances here tonight.  It was one of those games where you thought ‘are we ever going to score that second goal?’  But we stayed the course and we didn’t deviate from what we thought we had to do to win the hockey game.”

One of the perfect shots came off of the sticks of Austin Watson and Brad Winchester at 11:45 of the first period.  After Winny had a good chance in front of the crease, the rebound was kicked out to the point, right to Watson who was coming in on a line change.  Watson’s shot was deflected by Winchester into the net.  Originally credited to Watson, they changed the scoring to Winny after the game.

Sorry Watson fans…the goal drought continues.  15 games now. But he did plenty of other things to be an effective player tonight, for sure.

Here’s the first goal.

Mattias Ekholm netted the HUGE second goal with 3:14 left in the second period, after some nice sustained pressure in the offensive zone while the teams were skating 4×4.  Taylor Beck and Watson had some good opportunities, before the puck came to Ekholm along the far boards.  Pinching down, he won the race for the puck against Sergey Andronov, and then made a great move to make Jeff Woywitka look silly, before firing a shot into the corner of the net.  Perfect shot.

I like how TJ Hensick (#7) was just watching most of that shift.  Just a spectator.  Best seat in the house.  Even if he was just KIND OF paying attention, he might have been able to at least disrupt Ekholm’s shot.

NOTES:

From the I-Bet-Don-Tanner-Knew-This File, Magnus Hellberg became the first Ads goalie to shutout the same team in back-to-back meetings since Mark Dekanich did it in 2010 against the Aeros.  On the season, Hellberg has stopped 94 of 96 Rivermen shots.

Speaking of shots….the Admirals put up 19 shots in the second period alone.  It wasn’t a season high, but that’s a nice crooked number on the scoreboard, as they say.  They only had 4 in the third period while nursing the two-goal lead.  But I don’t think Peoria’s desperation level really resulted in that many solid scoring chances down the stretch.

Questions:

It was a nice effort tonight.  How much of it do you think was the Admirals playing well, versus the Rivermen playing poorly?

Does Hellberg look like a completely different goaltender than the one that wore his jersey in the first two months of the season?

Did you notice Jani Lajunen on the ice?  Or did he continue to be the invisible man?  How about Andre Bouvet-Morrissette?

Magnus Hellberg got his first start since last Friday and bounced back from that disappointing showing to lead the Ads to a second-straight victory over Chicago.

The big goalie was solid in regulation stopping 22 shots, and he finished the night off with two saves in the shootout.

The Admirals got off to a slow start with just four shots to Chicago’s 11 in the first period, but Hellberg kept the game scoreless making some big saves early.

The Wolves did grab the 1-0 lead 12:55 into the second when Derek Joslin fired a long pass to Darren Archibald to set up a 2-on-1 rush. Archibald whipped a backhand pass to Andrew Ebbett who scored from the slot.

After Kevin Connauton went to the box for roughing to give the Ads their second and last power play chance, Cam Reid tied the game at 16:11. Reider was in perfect position to put back a Juuso Puustinen rebound right in front.

Mike Moore was called for hooking about two minutes later, and the Wolves scored a power play goal of their own after their first four attempts had been killed off.

The Ads tried to corner Chicago and clear the puck along the boards but it came free to Darren Haydar who threw a shot on net from just under the blue line. Hellberg tried to get down and grab it, but Ebbett worked the puck loose, and Andrew Gordon flipped it over the goalie and in off the crossbar at 18:47.

Milwaukee rattled off 14 shots in the third period and finally tied the game again with 4:04 to play. Chris Mueller fired a shot from the near corner and Brad Winchester was able to jab it home past Matt Climie.

The Ads kept the offensive edge in overtime with the only three shots of the extra period, but Climie was able to send the game to the shootout round.

Puusty scored first in the shootout, deking forehand then backhand and sliding the puck in under Climie’s right pad.

Haydar answered with a similar move to get Hellberg down on the ice and slide the puck under him and in off the left post.

Then Matt Halischuk gave the Ads the lead for good whipping a nice little no-nonsense wrister in to Climie’s right.

Michael Davies, Taylor Beck and Nicklas Jensen were held scoreless in order, and Daniel Bang put another one home for the Ads on a backhand wrister.

In the do-or-die attempt, Hellberg stayed with Bill Sweatt all the way, and Sweatt missed the net just to the right, securing the win for Milwaukee.

Here are the highlights courtesy of the Wolves.

Notes:

In a game where the Ads allowed six total power play opportunities and only received two, the special teams units were efficient again.

That’s the last we’ll likely see of Halischuk, as he’s headed back to Nashville. Along with the winning shootout goal, he picked up an assist on the late Winchester goal.

The win kept Milwaukee’s playoff chances alive putting the Ads just two points behind Abbotsford for the eighth spot in the West.

Questions:

Hellberg looked good again, particularly with his glove and reaction time. If anything he set up an interesting decision for Wednesday’s game against Peoria. Who gets the start?

We hope Halischuk enjoyed his stay down here, as we certainly did. Again do you think his play will mean anything to the team in the long run?

Do you think the Ads will keep up the recent stretch of better special teams play? What else needs to stay constant for this team to make a serious run at the postseason?

After Friday’s game, Coach Dean Evason said he’d keep Matt Halischuk as long as Nashville wanted.

The right winger, who was sent down to Milwaukee this week on a conditioning assignment, made a big impact in the Admirals’ 4-3 victory netting the game-tying and go-ahead goals in the third period.

Kevin Henderson got the Ads off to a quick start thanks to a great play from Michael Latta. Latta was able to maintain possession of the puck after entering the Chicago zone and steer around a defender to feed Henderson who shot it from the slot.

Mark Matheson scored his fifth goal of the season and third against the Admirals at 9:47 to tie things up. Bill Sweatt’s shot was blocked, but the puck came free to Matheson in the slot and he quickly put it past Jeremy Smith.

The Wolves took the lead 2:01 into the second period when Darren Archibald shot the puck past Mattias Ekholm and over the left side of Smitty.

Ekholm didn’t have a great night, but captain Mike Moore and former captain Scott Ford, who played his first Bradley Center game since returning to the Ads, picked up the slack on defense. Moore made more than a few key blocks and did a nice job shutting down some breaks, while Ford’s quiet leadership was present according to Evason.

Evason has talked about the team struggles to score and come back in games, but down 2-1 at the start of the third period, the Ads had already registered 26 shots on net.

Halischuk had been trying to make things happen from the start of the game, and he was finally rewarded on a deflection in front of Matt Climie 43 seconds into the third period. The goal came on a power play after Derek Joslin was called for tripping.

Later in the period, Smitty was leveled by Nathan Longpre while trying to play the puck. Longpre was inadvertently shoved into the Ads goalie by Juuso Puustinen, and the impact knocked Smitty’s helmet off.

Smith shook it off and stayed in net, making some key saves down the stretch.

If Halischuk’s first goal had anything to do with luck, his second was all skill. He fired a great shot from the goal line that didn’t have a lot of room to work with, but squeezed through just under the crossbar at 10:18.

Puustinen would pick up an insurance goal about four minutes later that would pay dividends. Puusty was able to score on Milwaukee’s third attempt in a wild sequence, as Cam Reid and Taylor Beck’s shots were both denied by Climie.

Chicago pulled Climie with 1:24 remaining and put one in on a 6-4 advantage with 29.5 seconds on the clock. Smitty gave up a rebound that Andrew Ebbett was able to chip home to narrow the deficit to 4-3.

Smitty and the Ads were able to hold on in the final moments, however, as their aggressive defense kept the Wolves at bay.

Despite the late PP goal, the Ads special teams played quite well, particularly on a late kill in which they generated three odd-man shorthanded rushes. One was an all-out hustle play by Halischuk, who was thinking hat trick all the way, along with everyone else in the building.

Evason talked about the team’s aggression on the kill and its improvement from games past.

Notes:

Joonas Jarvinen was active and physical early but picked up three penalties that luckily didn’t hurt the team all that much.

Evason talked about Halischuk’s impact and whether or not it rubbed off on the rest of the roster.

The win came on a nice night for Victor Bartley as he played his first game in the NHL in Nashville. He got a block and a hit in just over 19 minutes of ice time. Good on him!

In that same game, Patric Hornqvist left with injury, meaning we might not see much more of Halischuk in Milwaukee.

Questions:

Do the Ads win this game if Halischuk isn’t in the lineup? As mentioned we probably shouldn’t get too caught up in it considering he likely won’t be here long. Do you think the team takes anything from his showing?

Besides him did you like what you saw from Ford and Beck back in the lineup? How about Moore’s night? He definitely played up to the standards of that “C” on his chest.

Do you feel the team can keep that intensity we saw on the late penalty kills up? It’s a theme that Evason seems ready to work with.