by Jay Flemma, Special to Facewash Magazine
UTICA, NY – There’s an old saying in football: if you have two quarterbacks, you have none. (See “Redskins, Washington” for Exhibit A). There’s a different saying in hockey: if you have two goalies, you win, and the plucky, feisty Utica Comets proved that adage true again.
Continuing their pattern of alternating starting goalies regardless of opponent, they outlasted a brutishly physical San Antonio Rampage 5-2 to remain in first place in the AHL’s Western Conference North Division. At 4-1-1, (9 points), the Comets maintained a one point over lead the Rochester Americans, (4-1, 8 points), who whipped the Adirondack Flames 4-1. The Toronto Marlies, (3-3, 6 points), who visit the Utica Aud tomorrow for an early-season division showdown, failed to keep pace, falling 4-1 to the Hamilton Bulldogs.
Goalie Joacim Eriksson made 38 saves, many of them hair-raising, while Latvian winger Ronalds Kenins scored two ugly, but clutch goals as the Comets powered to a 3-1 lead after two periods, then posted two empty net tallies after the Rampage rallied late to cut to 3-2 on a goal by defenseman Stephen Kampfer.
“It wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it,” admitted Comets Head Coach Travis Green candidly, after his team was out-shot 40-22. “I thought we were a little soft on the puck tonight, and turned it over too many times….but you’re gonna play some games that you’re not happy with, and you still have to find a way to win, and our goalie kept us in it.”
Boy you can say that again! Stick save, pad save, glove save – right, left, or five hole, Eriksson came up big time after time. Though the first three minutes of the game were rough – he gave up a few dangerous rebounds early – both he and the Comets defense settled down after Brandon DeFazio gave the Comets an early lead with a shorthanded goal at 4:21 of the first.
“It was an odd man break, and a great read by Jeffer [center Dustin Jeffrey]. I just tried to find a lane, and he put it on my stick,” Defazio explained, recalling the blistering wrister that beat Rampage goalie Dan Ellis on the glove side.
From then on, it was the Joacim Eriksson show, and what a block-buster it was. He flat-out stoned the Rampage’s John McFarland on an early first period breakaway, igniting the sell-out crowd into a frenzied roar. Then he turned away San Antonio’s leading sharp-shooter Garrett Wilson on the doorstop with first a stick save, then with a pad save of the rebound. Whether it was San Antonio leading scorer Vincent Trochek having a deflection turned aside with a deft wrist flick, a last gasp smothering of Rampage winger Bobby Butler’s wrap-around attempt, or any of the other acrobatic saves, Eriksson was as much a wizard as teammate Jacob Markstrom was two nights earlier in a 3-0 shutout of the Adirondack Flames.
“Joacim stood on his head for us, and that’s what we needed on a night where we could have played a little better in front of the home crowd,” admitted uber-talented, super-star center Dustin Jeffrey, who scored one of two short-handed goals in the final two minutes. (Nicklas Jensen netted the other.)
The other heroes were the penalty kill units, who held the potent San Antonio offense to a dismal 1 for 7 on the power play. The Comets even killed off a critical 5 on 3 for 1:35 in the middle of the second period to preserve what was a 2-0 lead at the time. It may have only been the second period on the scoreboard, but it encapsulated the game in a snapshot: gritty, tough-but smart defense, even to the point of sacrificing their bodies to block shots.
“Any time you get two points and a win, it’s a good night, and we found a way to win,” Coach Green concluded firmly. “We were on our heels a bit, but we bent yet didn’t break. That was a tough, good team we played.”
Perhaps that quote by Coach Green is the most poignant assessment of both last night and the Comets. There is one more inalienable truth in sports – the minute you’re satisfied with yourself as a player or a team, you’re finished. Here’s a Comets team that delivered an impressive win over a quality opponent, (San Antonio, the Florida Panthers affiliate, came into the game 3-1, 6 points – their only loss was to the Comets, who shut them out 3-0 in Texas last week). In doing so hit every bit as hard as the Rampage, (guys like Zalweski, Jones, and O’reilly each finished checks on opponents like they wanted to put them six rows into the crowd). They swarmed to the puck as well as San Antonio, frustrating the Rampage’s skill players to some extent, forcing them to take shots that were lower percentage than they would have liked. And when it came to transition far outstripped their opponent: the Comets mobile, speedy, aggressive-minded defensemen always getting the puck quickly to the forwards on the counter. It was smart, unselfish, winning hockey…
…And here were both coaches and players saying that they wanted to improve. That’s a winning attitude.
In fact it’s the kind of winning attitude the region hasn’t seen in forty years.
“Some of the old teams that used to play in that town were awful,” observed sports expert Bruce Moulton. “They had a basketball team one year, the Utica Olympics, that went a whole season where they only won something like eight or nine games, and even the hockey and baseball teams usually would flounder in the nether-reaches of the league standings – .500 or worse. It was tough being a sports fan in this town for a long time. Losing was hard-wired into their sports culture. But now the whole city has Comets fever and the excitement is palpable, and not just in Utica. What they are doing is resonating all across the AHL.”
He’s right. At the end of the day, the Comets are turning out to be more than just local sports mania. They’re a psycho-cultural movement, a resetting of the region’s entire sports zeitgeist waiting to happen. This town wants to cheer a winner, and when they see not just a winning team, but a winning team that beings a first-class, white-shoe, blue collar work ethic to the way they approach every game, they’ll embrace with both arms.
“When you play us, you play the whole city,” crowed one jubilant fan, celebrating the victory over margaritas at Swifty’s. “We’re all in this together. They’ll keep playing hard, and we’ll keep yelling for them.”
So far, the Comets look to keep their end of that bargain. Maybe they got outshot tonight, maybe they got out-hit tonight, maybe they even got outplayed tonight, but they didn’t get out-hustled. They beat Adirondack with speed and skill on Wednesday, they beat San Antonio with deflections and bouncing pucks.
“We got the lucky bounces tonight,” admitted Dustin Jeffrey. That was a tough team that came in here hungry for a win, because we beat them in their building last week.”
“It’s a good sign that we’re winning games like that,” added DeFazio, and he’s right, because San Antonio is a solid, well-rounded squad, a likely playoff team and a possible Calder Cup contender. Winning games against the top teams in the conference bodes well for the season.
And let me tell you something: when that foghorn blows after a goal, you’d think the Titanic was about drop its anchor right on your melon head. Then the roar goes up, reverberating all across the Aud, and in that low-ceilinged building it sounds like a jet engine.
The Comets are breakout stars, and the region’s love affair with them is hockey’s feel-good story. Between this gutsy team, the Frozen Dome classic in one month’s time, (which will be the largest indoor hockey game in history), and the All-star game coming later this season, if there’s a “Hockeytown, AHL,” it’s Utica.
Playing in front of these full, sell-out crowds is huge,” Jeffrey observed with a knowing smile. “Between our 60-minute, aggressive, fast style and the passion of these fans it’s a tough building to play in for other teams.”
“I hate this arena,” snarled aid one Rampage player whose number we didn’t catch,” proving Jeffrey completely right. “But that’s a really good team.”
