Expand<\/a><\/p>\nEight times in the storied history of the American Hockey League Calder Cup playoffs a team won a best-of-7 series after losing the first two games on home ice.<\/p>\n
The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins will try to make it nine.<\/p>\n
They face an 0-2 deficit after dropping the first two games of the Eastern Conference Final to the Toronto Marlies at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza. The series heads to Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto for Game 3 on Monday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
On a positive note, the Penguins account for two of the eight previous occasions where teams came back after losing the first two at home.<\/p>\n
In 2006, in the East Division Semifinals, the Penguins lost the first two games to the Bridgeport Sound Tigers at home. They won the next two in Bridgeport, lost Game 5 in overtime at home, won Game 6 at Bridgeport in overtime, then won Game 7 at home to take the series. Then in 2011, again in the East Division Semifinals, the Penguins lost the first two games at home to the Norfolk Admirals, but won the next four \u2014 including three in Norfolk. That is the last time a team accomplished the feat.<\/p>\n
Toronto also did it. In 2008, the Marlies lost the first two games of the North Division Final at home to the Syracuse Crunch and trailed, 3-1, in the series before rallying to win the final three games.<\/p>\n
Other teams to do it were the 1960 Rochester Americans over the Cleveland Barons, 4 games to 3, in the semifinals; the 1989 Adirondack Red Wings over the Hershey Bears, 4-3, in semifinals. In fact, Adirondack also lost Game 3, then won the next four to advance and eventually win the Calder Cup; the 1994 Adirondack Red Wings over the Springfield Indians, 4-2, in the first round; the 1997 Hershey Bears over the Springfield Falcons, 4-3, in the semifinals. Hershey went on to win the Calder Cup; and the 2010 Hershey Bears over the Texas Stars, 4-2, in the Calder Cup Final.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a long series. We\u2019re not out of this by any means,\u201d said forward Tanner Howe, who scored the Penguins\u2019 lone goal in Game 2. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to go to Toronto, play our style, play our game, get back to what we do.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been good on the road all year. Nothing changes for us. We\u2019re going to go in there, like I said, and play our game, get back to what we do. I think good things are going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Pezzetta scored the go-ahead goal with 1:36 remaining in the third period and Logan Shaw added an empty-netter with 48 seconds left to give Toronto a 4-2 win in Game 1. Then in Game 2, Pezzetta again had the game-winner on a fluky, disputed goal at 14:53 of overtime. He flipped the puck in the air from the left point. Both Penguins goalie Sergei Murashov and the Marlies\u2019 Marc Johnstone jumped for it and the puck went into the net. Immediately, the referee waved it off. But after video review \u2014 not for goalie interference since that can\u2019t be reviewed, but for whether Johnstone knocked it in with his hand \u2014 the puck went off Murashov\u2019s left arm and in and it was ruled a good goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t love our game in Game 1, but I don\u2019t think it was lack of effort,\u201d Penguins coach Kirk MacDonald said. \u201cIt\u2019s been two one-shot games. We\u2019re going to go there and try to win the next one-shot game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know they\u2019re really good, they\u2019re a veteran group. We just have to regroup. I have the utmost confidence in the guys that they\u2019re going to come out with a great effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the Penguins are to come back, they have to find a way to solve Artur Akhtyamov. The Marlies goalie stopped 67 of 70 shots. In fact, during Toronto\u2019s current four-game winning streak \u2014 the last two games of the North Division Final against the Cleveland Monsters and the first two games against the Penguins \u2014 Akhtyamov has not allowed more than two goals in a game and stopped 125 of 132 shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to continue to get to the paint (crease),\u201d MacDonald said. \u201cThis time of the year, the ice is bad. It is what it is. Not just here, but everywhere. It\u2019s hot outside, there\u2019s more people in the building. So you\u2019ve got to be more cognizant of getting there. Sometimes making the play seems like the right idea, but sometimes just getting pucks there and having people drive to the net, drive to the back post, trying to create second-chance opportunities. The intent was there (Friday). But like I said, two really good goalies, two really good teams. We\u2019re going to get back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though his team is heading home with a 2-0 lead, Toronto coach John Gruden knows the series is far from over.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how good this (Penguins) team is,\u201d Gruden said. \u201cI think we did a lot of good things that we can show how we had success (Friday), which is going to be important. There\u2019s not a bigger game than Game 3. They always say whoever wins Game 3 a lot of times wins series. We know that, we\u2019re going to be ready for it and we\u2019ll be excited for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the travel, we get three at home. So we\u2019ve got to take care of business. We\u2019ve got to continue to do what we did in Game 2. We should be excited. No one\u2019s going to go away easily, we know it\u2019s going to be hard. So we\u2019ll embrace that challenge, move forward and look forward to Monday night.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Western Conference Final, the Colorado Eagles and Chicago Wolves are tied, 1-1, in their best-of-7 series after Colorado won Game 2 on Saturday night, 5-2. The next three games are in Chicago, starting with Game 3 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton\u2019s Aidan McDonough (8) skates with the puck during Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19017,49,48],"class_list":["post-69245","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\/69245","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=69245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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