2023 SHL Division Finals – Game 2

QUEBEC TIGRES 2, HAMILTON PISTOLS 1

(Quebec leads series, 2-0)

If the Hamilton Pistols are looking for positives from Game 2 of the Eastern Division finals, they can find a few.  Most notably, this was a considerably closer contest than Game 1, when the Quebec Tigres scored three times in the first period and wound up winning 4-1.  By that standard, today’s 2-1 loss feels like a step in the right direction.

In the bigger picture, though, the Pistols are clearly in trouble in this series.  They have yet to lead even a single second in this series, and have been behind for almost all of it.  Worse yet, Quebec has the Pistols playing on their terms: they’re having to fight for every zone entry, they’ve been unable to establish any rhythm, and they’re mired in a physical battle of open-ice hits and fights, rather than the speed and precision passing they demonstrate at their best.

“You all know I’m an optimistic guy, and we’re definitely not out of this series yet,” said Hamilton coach Keith Shields.  “But even as big an optimist as I am, I can see that what we’re doing isn’t working.”

The Tigres took control of this game from the opening puck drop.  Tigres C Mikhail Ilyushin won the opening faceoff, and Quebec marched into the offensive zone and went to work.  D Richard McKinley fired a slap-pass to Ilyushin, who was stationed just to the right of the crease and tipped the puck in before Pistols goalie Lasse Koskinen could get his glove up.  The game was just 15 seconds old, Quebec already had a lead, and the crowd at Centre Citadelle sounded like a jet engine at full blast.

“We kind of got that feeling in the pit of our stomach like, ‘Oh boy, it’s going to be a long day,’” said Pistols C Calvin Frye.

Sixteen seconds after Ilyushin’s goal, Pistols LW Steven Alexander was penalized for holding the stick while in the offensive zone.  This rare mental miscue from such a heady player not only killed a promising possession, but demonstrated just how rattled Alexander and his teammates were by the quick deficit and the roaring crowd.

Although the score remained the same throughout the remainder of the first and second, Hamilton’s offense remained stuck in neutral, and their frustration levels mounted.  In the back half of the second, Pistols D Hercules Mulligan threw hands with Tigres D Laurie Workman.  Although it might have seemed like an attempt to fire up his team, Mulligan admitted after the game that he simply grew annoyed with Workman’s relentless, smothering defense.

The defenseman told reporters that the Tigres “just don’t let go, man.  They dig their claws into you and they just keep hanging on.  Workman was just hacking and slashing our guys up and down the ice, and eventually it just boiled over.”

Midway through the third, Tigres C Tanner Brooks laid a hard hit on Pistols RW Nori Takoyaki near center ice.  Hamilton felt the hit should have been called for boarding, but the referees didn’t agree.  D Clayton Risch responded by dropping the gloves with Brooks, which angered Quebec in turn, since Risch outweighs the wiry Brooks by at least 50 pounds.

Less than a minute later, Quebec went on the power play thanks to an interference call on Pistols D Elvis Bodett.  RW Luc LePettier cashed in on the ensuing power play to double the home team’s lead.  Hamilton crawled back within one when Frye scored with 6:34 remaining in regulation, but the Tigres snuffed them out the rest of the way.

The series shifts to Gunpowder Armory for Game 3, and the Pistols hope fervently that the change of venue leads to a change in momentum.  “When we’re back in our barn, in front of our fans, that will give us a little extra pep in our step,” said Shields.  “That will be the chance we need to get this thing turned around.”

The Tigres, meanwhile, sense blood in the water and are looking to finish the job on the road.  “We’re in their head now,” said Workman.  “We’ve still got work to do, but the key message for us is: Don’t let up.”

 

ANCHORAGE IGLOOS 2, MICHIGAN GRAY WOLVES 0

(Series tied, 1-1)

After their stunning third-period collapse in Game 1, the Anchorage Igloos were eager to get even in Game 2.  Even though the Igloos felt they’d gotten the better end of the play in that game, they were still smarting at the outcome.  And they knew they couldn’t afford to fall into an 0-2 hole to the Michigan Gray Wolves while playing on home ice.

“That can’t happen,” said C Jake Frost about the possibility of losing Game 2.  “Whatever we need to do, we can’t let that happen.”

It didn’t happen.  Although the game unfolded more at Michigan’s preferred (deliberate) pace than Anchorage’s, the Igloos kept the Wolves safely in check on the way to a 2-0 series-evening victory.

“That’s more like it,” said Anchorage coach Sam Castor of the Game 2 result.  “Just like I said, we were able to put the last game behind us and get back on the beam.”

Igloos goalie Ty Worthington, who took responsibility for allowing three goals on just 15 shots in Game 1, had no problem posting a 17-save shutout in this one.  Unlike the last game, the Wolves were most active in the first period, putting up 10 shots in the first period and 7 in the last two periods combined.

“That helped, honestly,” said Worthington.  “When the game starts off at a good pace and falls off later, that’s better than the other way around.  It’s better to get locked in from the beginning.”

Castor especially praised the performance of rookie Darren Chillum, who assisted on D Sebastian Pomfret’s first-period goal and scored himself in the third.  “Darren definitely doesn’t look like a rookie out there,” said the Anchorage coach.  “He skates and moves the puck with the confidence of a veteran.  Honestly, he reminds me of [LW] Les [Collins] as a young player.  If he winds up developing like Les did, that would be huge for us.”

The coach also praised his team’s willingness to block shots; the Igloos wound up with more blocks (18) than the Wolves had shots on goal (17).  “That’s the kind of unselfishness that makes this team so great,” said Castor.  “Our guys are willing to put their bodies on the line to win.  This is why we’ve been so successful for so many postseasons: they’re willing to step up and go the extra mile when it counts.”

The Wolves took the loss in stride.  “The key for us was to win one here in Anchorage,” said coach Gilbert McCoyne.  “We got that in Game 1.  We expected that they’d come back strong in this one, but we got our work done already.”

Both teams identified Game 3 as pivotal for the rest of the series.  “We staved off disaster today,” said Frost.  “Now we need to go down to their place and win the next one, so we can take control of this series again.”

“We punched them in the jaw in the opener,” countered Wolves C Hunter Bailes.  “The series is tied, and we haven’t even played really well yet.  If we can show up at home and play our best hockey, we have a chance to shock the world.  Let’s do it!”

 

(box scores below the fold)

2023 SHL Division Finals – Game 1

MICHIGAN GRAY WOLVES 3, ANCHORAGE IGLOOS 2

(Michigan leads series, 1-0)

At the second intermission, the Anchorage Igloos seemingly had Game 1 on lock.  They had completely stifled the offense of the Michigan Gray Wolves, limiting them to six shots in the first two periods – combined.  Meanwhile, the Igloos themselves had skated up and down the ice with ease.  Thanks to a pair of goals from an unlikely source –C Tanner Everest – Anchorage held a 2-0 lead that felt like a dozen thanks to Michigan’s haplessness.  The crowd at Arctic Circle Arena was at full roar, ready to count down the minutes to certain victory.

By the time the game ended, however, the Wolves had stunned the Igloos, scoring three times in the third period to steal the series opener 3-2.  Instead of facing questions about whether they had the speed and skill to keep up with the Igloos, Michigan turned the tables.  Instead, it was Anchorage that had to answer uncomfortable queries: why their top line failed to produce a point, why goalie Ty Worthington had chosen this moment to post his worst game of the postseason, and how they could have let a game that was seemingly in the bag slip through their fingers.

“That was a real gut punch,” said Igloos C Jake Frost.  “There’s no way to sugarcoat it.  This one hurts.”

The first sign that the third period might not be like the first two came at the 1:44 mark, when Wolves D Gil Calvert fired a shot that beat Worthington but hit the crossbar.  Less than three minutes later, the Igloos went a man down when D Dave Frederick committed a tripping penalty.  The Igloos successfully killed off most of the power play, but with less than 30 seconds remaining, the Igloos stubbed an attempted clear.  Wolves RW Remi Montrechere scooped up the puck and found LW Steve Brandon, who found pay dirt before Worthington could react.

Roughly a minute after Brandon’s goal, the Igloos had the chance to restore their two-goal edge thanks to a high-sticking call on Wolves C Phoenix Cage.  They came up empty, however, managing just a single shot on net.  They still led 2-1 when Michigan D Fritz Kronstein was whistled for slashing.  That power play lasted just 44 seconds until RW Nicklas Ericsson, upset at what he felt was an incorrect offside call that negated an odd-man rush, was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct for accidentally firing the puck in the linesman’s direction.  Just after the 4-on-4 stretch ended, C Hunter Bailes freed the puck with a poke check near center ice and fired a perfect pass to Montrechere, who streaked through the Anchorage defense and fired a slapper over Worthington’s glove to tie the game up with 4:20 left to play.

“For the first forty minutes, our passes just weren’t connecting,” said Montrechere.  “But in the third, we finally got our timing together.”

Montrechere’s goal silenced the crowd.  And just when they were starting to get back into it, Wolves LW Dave Yaughn collected a juicy rebound and went top shelf, taking a lead no one expected.

Worthington took responsibility for the loss, saying, “Rocking-chair games are tough on a goalie, but it’s on me to make sure I stay sharp,” said the Igloos goalie.  “That second goal was pretty soft – I’d like to have that one back – and I shouldn’t have left that fat rebound on the last one.”

Coach Sam Castor acknowledged that the loss was a blow, but predicted his team would put it behind them.  “I’m glad that this is best-of-seven, so we have more time to recover,” said Castor.  “But one of our strengths as a team is that we don’t let the results of the last game overly affect us.  We don’t get too high from wins or too low from losses.  By the time the puck drops for Game 2, we’ll already have forgotten this one.”

The Wolves, on the other hand, plan to remember this one.  “This was a tremendous rally for us,” said coach Gilbert McCoyne.  “For anybody who was thinking we’d be outclassed in this series, I think we’ve shown that we’re ready to take the fight to these guys.”

 

QUEBEC TIGRES 4, HAMILTON PISTOLS 1

(Quebec leads series, 1-0)

In the locker room before the start of the Eastern Division finals, Quebec Tigres coach Martin Delorme had an important message for his team.  “Go out today and get a strong start,” Delorme told his players.  “Take control early, and don’t let them think they have a chance.”

The Tigres heeded their coach’s directive, scoring three times in the first period and cruising to a 4-1 victory over the Hamilton Pistols.

“It’s nice for us to make it easy on ourselves,” said Tigres LW Walt Camernitz.  “There’s no such thing as a playoff game with no stress, but this is probably as close as it gets.”

The sellout crowd of orange-clad partisans at Centre Citadelle was rocking from the opening puck drop, and Quebec fed off their fans’ energy.  Less than three and a half minutes into the game, D Richard McKinley put the home team ahead with a blistering slap shot from high in the zone that made it through traffic and into the net.

A couple minutes later, Hamilton found themselves in a 5-on-3 penalty kill courtesy of a hooking call on D Hercules Mulligan and a high-sticking penalty on C Dale Wilcox just over 40 seconds apart.  Tigres LW Rupert MacDiarmid made the Pistols pay with an unassisted tally to make it 2-0.

In the latter half of the first, the visitors got one back when C Calvin Frye converted his own power-play strike.  But the Tigres kept the pressure on, and RW Rory Socarra restored the Tigres two-goal lead with 1:15 remaining in the period with a shot from a severe angle that banked off Pistols G Lasse Koskinen’s stick and in.

After a fairly wide-open first period, the Tigres tightened the defensive screws in the second and frustrated and flummoxed the Pistols, bogging down their attacks and thwarting attempts to establish any kind of rhythm.  Hamilton, which managed just three shots on goal in the second, didn’t help their cause with a pair of penalties.  In between power plays, Camernitz scored on a wrister that caught Koskinen sprawling the wrong way to put Quebec up by three.

“To me, that was a clinic in how to hold a lead,” said Delorme of his team’s middle-period effort.  “We drove them into the ditch, and they had no response.”

The third period was largely a formality.  Pistols D Clayton Risch tried to fire up his team early in the period by dropping the gloves with Tigres D Laurie Workman, but they failed to reverse the momentum.  Hamilton fired few truly challenging shots at Tigres goalie Riki Tiktuunen, who finished with 23 saves.

Pistols coach Keith Shields said the game was a wake-up call for his team.  “We got outworked and outhustled in this one, no question about it,” said Shields.  “Fortunately, we’ve got some time to turn it around.  But we’d better step up our game, or this is going to be a short series.”

A short series is just what Quebec is hoping for, though they’re not foolish enough to predict one.  “This was not the true Pistols team we saw tonight,” said RW Stephane Mirac.  “They are too good.  We know they will push back on us, and we will need to be ready.”

 

(bos scores below the fold)

Igloos, Wolves Reignite Classic Rivalry

The Western Division finals matchup between the Anchorage Igloos and the Michigan Gray Wolves may not seem like a hot rivalry to new fans.  Those who have followed the SHL since the beginning, however, recognize that this Finals meeting represents a new chapter in the league’s oldest rivalry.

For the SHL’s first three seasons, 2015 to 2017, the Igloos and Wolves finished with the best two records in the league each season.  Anchorage took home the league’s first Vandy, while Michigan captured the second.  When the playoff field expanded from two teams to four in 2018, the Wolves and the Igloos faced off in the first Western final.  The Igloos were the underdogs that year, finishing 14 points behind Michigan in the standings, but they pulled off a stunning sweep and went on to win their second Vandy.

The rivalry wasn’t just in the standings, either.  The teams were fierce competitors on the ice, often coming to blows when the teams meet; even their mascots got in on the action.  In 2018, Wolves color commentator Blackie Sprowl joined the fray by slamming the city of Anchorage on the air, calling it remote and lifeless and claiming that the city “smells like rotting fish,” prompting Michigan fans to chuck trout at the Anchorage bench during the team’s next contest.

Since 2018, though, the rivalry has gone dormant, as the Wolves fell down the standings while the Igloos continued to thrive.  Michigan has since revamped its roster and switched coaches from Ron Wright to Gilbert McCoyne, and now they’re ready to do battle with their old nemesis once again.

“People forget how intense this rivalry was,” said Wolves C Hunter Bailes, who has been there since the league’s beginning.  “We treated Igloos games like they were the Finals, because in a lot of ways, they were.”

The Wolves will find a lot of familiar faces on the other side of the rivalry.  Anchorage’s top line of LW Jerry Koons, C Jake Frost, and RW Nicklas Ericsson remains intact from the old days, and Ty Worthington continues to prowl between the pipes.  The Igloos’ top-ranked offense, always one of their greatest strengths, is just as potent as ever.

“I’m excited to renew this rivalry,” said Igloos coach Sam Castor.  “Playing the Wolves always seemed to bring out the best hockey in us; we knew we had to take it up a notch to match up with those guys.  I’m sure we’ll see the same this time around.”

The Wolves have a few of their old stalwarts from those days – Bailes, D Fritz Kronstein, G Dirk “The Bear” Lundquist – but they’ve also seen significant turnover since then.  Unsurprisingly, most of Michigan’s players are focused on the present rather than on the past.

“To us, this isn’t a replay of 2015 or 2018, but its own thing,” said C Cyril Perignon.  “And we think this is a pretty even matchup.  We nearly had the same record as [the Igloos] in the regular season, and then we took out the defending champs [the Milwaukee Growlers] in the first round.  It’s good for the fans to talk about the history, but to us this is a clean slate.”

That’s a smart approach for Perignon and the Wolves to take; after all, history is very much on Anchorage’s side.  They made the Finals three times out of four during their previous rivalry, and have made the Finals six times overall and won three Vandys.  Michigan, meanwhile, is still seeking its first Finals appearance since their 2016 Vandy.

“The Igloos have had an impressive and long-lasting dynasty,” said Kronstein.  “But all dynasties have to end sometime, and how great would it be if this was the beginning of the end for the Igloos dynasty?”

“Bring it on,” said Frost in response.  “Every time someone predicts the end of our dynasty, we usually wind up on top again, and they wind up falling apart.”

The players on both teams are clearly ready for this matchup.  It’s hard to say whether the same is true for the mascot.  Both Anchorage’s Petey the Polar Bear and Michigan’s Wally Wolf declined comment for this story.

Tigres-Pistols Series Offers Northern Exposure

Who is the best all-time team in the SHL’s Eastern Division?  There are a lot of ways to attempt to answer that question, but there’s no question that the division’s two Canadian clubs, the Quebec Tigres and Hamilton Pistols, would merit serious consideration.  One or the other of the two teams has been the East’s representative in the SHL Finals the last five seasons in a row.  That streak will stretch to six this year, as the Pistols and Tigres are set to meet in the Eastern finals.

Somewhat surprisingly, this is only the third postseason meeting between these two heavyweights.  In both of their previous matchups, Quebec emerged victorious.  The 2018 Eastern finals saw the Tigres take the full five games to eliminate the Pistols.  Last year, the teams faced off in the first round, and top-seeded Quebec sent fourth-seeded Hamilton packing in four games.

“Obviously, we have a good history with them,” said Tigres RW Stephane Mirac.  “We know that guarantees nothing about what will happen this time.”

Notwithstanding Mirac’s statement, Quebec is considered the favorite in this series.  They are the East’s defending champs, and they finished in first again during the regular season.  They handed the plucky Washington Galaxy with ease in the first round, dispensing of them in a sweep.  After riding a combination of ferocious defense and excellent goaltending to Finals appearances in 2018 and 2022 but coming up short both times, Tigres GM Pete Gondret decided the best way to get over the hump was to add offensive depth, both with free-agent signings such as LW Vonnie McLearen and rookie call-ups such as RW Milosz Dabrowski.

The additions have proven successful, and Quebec’s offense makes the team multi-dimension.  Unlike in past seasons, they don’t have to count on turning games into low-scoring rock fights in order to win.  They can now match up against whatever style of play is presented to them, which will be particularly useful against high-flying Hamilton.

“This will not be like the series against Washington, or even like last year against the Pistols,” said Tigres coach Martin Delorme.  “In those series, we knew we were the better team, and our biggest enemy was overconfidence.  This time, we have an opponent that is at our level, and it will be a much tougher battle.”

The core of the Pistols teams that won back-to-back Vandys and made three straight Finals appearances from 2019 to 2021 remains intact: LW Steven Alexander, C Calvin Frye, RW Claude Lafayette, Ds Clayton Risch and Hercules Mulligan, and G Lasse Koskinen are all still on hand.  They also had a sort of preview of this series in the first round.  They played the Boston Badgers, a team that plays in a slow defense-first style similar to Quebec, and dispatched them with surprising ease in four games.  The Tigres are a tougher opponent than the Badgers – for example, Quebec’s offense and goaltending are both superior to Boston’s – but the Pistols feel particularly well prepared for the series at hand.

“It’s not like we’re having to go from a boxing match to a track meet,” said Pistols coach Keith Shields.  “We’ll be dancing to the same tune that we were dancing to last week, and we’re already accustomed to that style and rhythm.  I think that will serve us well in this series.”

Will the Pistols’ dance moves be enough to take down the Tigres?  Is the third time the charm for Hamilton?  Or will Quebec shut down their Canadian rivals and make a second straight Finals trip, with a shot to claim their first Vandy?  Either way, expect a chess match between two talented and well-coached teams eager to stake their claim as the East’s all-time best.