The Manchester Monarchs were eliminated from the Calder Cup Playoffs Saturday night in excruciating fashion as they fell in overtime to the Springfield Falcons for the third time and lost their best-of-five first round series three-games-to-one with a 4-3 defeat.
The Monarchs had led 3-1 midway through the game before a pair of late second period Falcons goals and a scoreless third period necessitated overtime. All four games in the series were decided by one goal.
Nick Drazenovic scored the game-winner at 8:06 of the first overtime as Cody Bass, who had scored overtime game winning goals in Games 1 and 2, had created a turnover in neutral ice.
“It’s bittersweet,” Monarchs Head Coach Mark Morris told Manchester Monarchs.com. “We came a long way with this bunch and had a lot of personalities that came through. I am sure after we look at it and this thing dissipates, we will look back and see a lot of growth in these guys. We played well as a team. We hung in there against a very good team and had a chance to win this one today and got little bit sloppy again but the growth we have seen is pretty impressive I think.”
Linden Vey had two goals and eight shots, while Colton Yellow Horn rounded out the scoring for Manchester.
Nick Deslauriers led the team in postseason scoring with four points (2-2=4), followed by Andy Andreoff (0-3=3), Vey (2-0=2), David Meckler (1-1=2), Yellow Horn (1-1=2), Brandon Kozun (0-2=2) and Jordan Weal (0-2=2). Brian O’Neill, Anthony Stewart and Tanner Pearson finished with one point apiece, as did goaltender Martin Jones, who stopped 137-of-147 shots in the playoffs (.932 Sv%) and finished with a 2.16 goals against average in addition to his assist.
Rules for Blog Commenting
Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.
Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.