Expand<\/a><\/p>\nWILKES-BARRE TWP. \u2014 Toronto is making it a habit of scoring late to win games in the AHL Calder Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n
Michael Pezzetta\u2019s goal with 1:36 remaining in the third period broke a tie and gave the Marlies a 4-2 win over the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final on Wednesday night at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza before a crowd of 3,447.<\/p>\n
Easton Cowan and William Villeneuve had second-period goals and Logan Shaw added an empty-netter with 48 seconds left, as Toronto took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-7 series and seized home-ice advantage. Game 2 is Friday at 7:05 p.m. at Mohegan Arena.<\/p>\n
Alex Alexeyev and Rutger McGroarty scored for the Penguins and goalie Sergei Murashov made just 12 saves.<\/p>\n
In the fifth and deciding game of the North Division Final on Sunday against the Cleveland Monsters, Toronto scored twice in the final 4:30 of the third period, including the game-winner with 11.3 seconds left, to win and advance.<\/p>\n
The Marlies struck again late Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve played the max games, they know they\u2019re in a fight every time,\u201d Penguins coach Kirk MacDonald said. \u201cThey play really hard and are a well-coached team.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was a game dominated by the Penguins almost everywhere except the scoreboard. They outshot the Marlies, 36-16, and had puck possession the majority of the time. But MacDonald said that meant nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the shot clock was indicative of our game,\u201d MacDonald said. \u201cThey outexecuted us because we were content to just play on the perimeter. We created some shots, the shot clock looked good, but we didn\u2019t do enough to make it hard on the goalie, make it hard enough on the D. You\u2019ve got to converge on the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a good job of possessing pucks. We\u2019ll look at the analytics report (Thursday) and it will look cool. But to me, we didn\u2019t get to the net. We had the puck, but we were content to just have it and not be hard to the net.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marlies goalie Artur Akhtyamov stopped 34 of 36 shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, there was a lot of good to take from that game, but also a lot of stuff to learn from,\u201d McGroarty said. \u201cExecution is the biggest thing and making the most of your opportunities. A good team like that, if you let them hang around, they\u2019re going to capitalize on their opportunities at the end of the day. They\u2019ve got a good goalie over there and we\u2019ve got to try to make his life a little harder. Take away his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got some really good looks, but with that comes second opportunities. I think there were too many one-and-dones tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trailing, 2-1, McGroarty pulled the Penguins even at 6:01 of the third period. Tristan Broz created a turnover in the Toronto zone and passed the puck to McGroarty at the right faceoff circle dot. McGroarty skated in on Akhtyamov, who went down, skated around him and from below the goal line banked the puck in off the fallen goalie.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great play by Brozer, great forecheck forcing the turnover,\u201d McGroaty said. \u201cHe found me, and I thought the goalie was challenging more than he was. So I tried to fake and go around him. I saw that he wasn\u2019t on his post, so I just banked it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It appeared as if the game might be headed to overtime, but Henry Thrun kept the puck in the Penguins zone at the left blue line and sent it behind the net to Marc Johnstone. The former Penguin circled around and found Pezzetta in the slot just above the faceoff circles. Pezzetta wristed a shot past the glove of Murashov for the game-winner at 18:24.<\/p>\n
Forty-eight seconds later, at 19:12, with Murashov pulled for a sixth attacker, Shaw fired the puck the length of the ice into the empty net to seal it.<\/p>\n
Frustrations boiled over with 28.4 seconds left. Broz cross-checked Johnstone and the two of them dropped the gloves. Broz received a five-minute major penalty, a 10-minute misconduct and a game misconduct. Johnstone was given an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and a 10-minute misconduct. Avery Hayes and Marshall Rifai also got into it and both received unsportsmanlike conduct and 10-minute misconducts.<\/p>\n
Much of the first period was a feeling-out process between the teams. The Penguins outshot Toronto, 13-5, and had the lone power play of the period when Pezzetta was called for holding the stick at 4:44. However, the Marlies had the best scoring chance when Shaw picked up a loose puck and came in on a shorthanded breakaway. But Murashov made the save.<\/p>\n
Alexeyev was robbed by Akhtyamov at the 11:25 mark when the Marlies goalie slid across and gloved Alexeyev\u2019s shot from the right circle.<\/p>\n
Alexeyev put the Penguins on the scoreboard at 16:48 when his shot from the left point found its way through a maze of bodies in front and past Akhtyamov to make it 1-0. Mikhail Ilyin and Harrison Brunicke had the assists.<\/p>\n
Toronto only had five shots in the second period, but scored on two of them.<\/p>\n
First, Cowan tied the game at 1:48. Then, Gabe Klassen of the Penguins was called for high-sticking at 16:45. Eleven seconds into the ensuing power play, Villeneuve rifled a shot from the center blue line into the top-right corner of the net to give the Marlies a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
The Penguins will try to avoid going down, 2-0, in the series Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be perfect if we just went three-three-four-four and won every game, but that\u2019s not the playoffs,\u201d McGroarty said. \u201cIn every series, we\u2019ve faced a little adversity and we\u2019ve overcome it. We\u2019ve got a really good group, guys who play for each other and fight for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton\u2019s Alex Alexyev (56) handles the puck against the Toronto Marlies during Game 1 of the Eastern Conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19017,49,48],"class_list":["post-64250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-penguins","tag-sports","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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