Gaunce Scores two as Comets Beat Wolves, win Playoff Series
By Jay Flemma, Special to Facewash Magazine
UTICA, NY – Heading into the deciding game of Utica’s first AHL playoff hockey series since 1993, I was reminded of the words Mario Lemieux texted each of his Pittsburgh Penguin players before Game 7 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final.
“Play without fear and I’ll meet you at center ice for the celebration.”
And like those Penguins who bested Detroit in Detroit – the first time a visiting team won a deciding Game 7 in the championship round in any sport since the 1979 Pirates – the Comets outlasted the Chicago Wolves 4-2 with a gutsy, clutch, and yes, fearless performance.
Also like those Penguins, who got two goals from an unlikely source in grinder Max Talbot, it was a surprise hero for the Comets who scored twice. Rookie Brendan Gaunce, reinserted into the line-up for the first time since Game 2, notched two second period power play goals in the span of two-and-a-half minutes, including the game winner with less than five minutes remaining in the frame.
“On the first one I came off the bench and got the puck out wide and tried to get off a quick shot, and was lucky enough to go five hole,” Gaunce explained. “On the second one Baertschi made a great shot and it went off the post, and I was just in the right place at the right time,” he finished, smiling proudly.
Talk about taking advantage of your opportunity when you get it.
The Comets trademark swarming, smothering defense took over in the third, limiting the Wolves to just five shots on goal, (and only 19 overall). Sven Baertschi’s empty-net tally with 43 seconds left sealed the game and touched off a celebration both inside and outside the arena as fans stood cheering for a full ten minutes after three stars were announced, while fireworks streaked skyward into the North Country night, their eerie witch-light bathing everyone in the warm glow of playoff victory for the first time since 1970.
It brought an end to an incredible opening round series, a 1 vs. 8 match-up in name only as the Comets and Wolves were near mirror images of each other in toughness, defense, and skill. With the exception of Baertschi’s empty-netter, only one goal separated the two teams all series.
“It’s kind of the way our year’s been; we always battle, nothing ever comes easy,but we always seem to be in these one goal, hard games, and I think we were ready for it. We were conditioned for it.” said Brandon DeFazio, who opened the scoring by beating Wolves goaltender Jordan Binnington to the stick side. “He kept saving glove side, so I had to try something else….”
“We were pretty calm before the game. We played a lot of great hockey his year. We know what we’re capable of, especially at home,” added Gaunce. “We all agreed we had to play well for the whole 60 minutes, and I think we achieved that.”
And indeed it took every ounce of conditioning, discipline, speed, and most importantly, patience to finally dispatch the Wolves, as Bennington did his best to try to steal the series. More than any other game, the Comets were able to exploit their superior speed in Game 5, generating odd-man rush after odd-man rush, but Bennington was a wall frustrating them time and again with one acrobatic save after another. Bennington saved a whopping 182 out of 194 shots in the series, including 50 in Game 3 alone, and when he blanked the Comets in the first period of Game 5 despite having to turn aside no less than three breakaways, Comets fans found themselves snarling “That freaking goalie!” almost as much as they were chanting “”U-TI-CA!”
“Had the Wolves won, Bennington would have been MVP of the series hands down,” noted hockey commentator Bruce Moulton. “It’s funny, but he always seems to save his best for Utica.”
Even in victory the Comets admired Bennington’s gallant performance, as player after player took extra time to chat with him in the post-series handshake line.
“He was their best player by far,” said Darren Archibald in an earlier interview, and he was still solid tonight,just not as perfect as he needed to be.
“My role is to give us a chance to win. You never want to pass up chances like this. Both teams played hard, but they just kept coming,” Binnington remarked. “They like to make the extra play, and no matter what you do, they just keep coming.”
“It was a war out there. They just kept coming, and we just kept coming,” admitted Wolves forward Magnus Paajarvi, as “Take me Home, Country Roads” played softly in the visiting locker room. “They like to stretch you out and come at you with a lot of speed. They are explosive end to end, back and forth….We battled them with everything we had. There wasn’t one second where we didn’t give it our all, but it just wasn’t enough.”
While it was disappointment for the Wolves, it was also redemption for the Comets, who lost Game 4 in excruciating fashion, surrendering an own goal when a shot deflected off Adam Clendening’s stick and behind Jacob Markstrom.
“I was trying to get out of the way,” Clendening lamented after the game, shaking his head at the monumentally bad luck. That goal tied the game. Then the Comets got called for too many men on the ice in overtime, a penalty almost universally decried as anywhere from “ticky-tack” to a certain curse word that starts with “B” and rhymes with “spit.”
“That was the first time all season that Comets fans chanted that word” noted one commentator. “They’re pretty well behaved hockey fans in Utica. They hadn’t done that all season, so for them to get that agitated – for it to rain down relentlessly like that – speaks volumes about a ref knowing when to swallow the whistle and not affect the outcome of a series.”
Faced with a deciding game in a series against an experienced, battle tested squad like Chicago, a lesser team might have folded. But the Cardiac Comets have learned how to win…how to close out games with a combination of defense, discipline, and an explosive counter-attack, now far more powerful with the addition of Clendening, sharp-shooter Sven Baertschi, and tiny, but feisty playmaker Cory Conacher, who plays far taller than his listed 5’8″.
Talk about tough little Hobbits, Frodo Baggins ain’t got nothing on him. Being short myself, I can relate to that.
Anyway, the new additions were what Dan Bylsma, coach of those 2009 Stanley Cup champion Penguins called “the piece” – that one thing you were missing to make your team a total juggernaut. That’s what the newbies turned out to be for the Comets – the missing piece, The offensive firepower to turn all those one goal games into dominant performances. They were the piece, and the Comets became a juggernaut, ripping off 11 in a row late in the season, and soaring up the standings to the top spot.
They also helped ignite the power play. Anemic all year until their arrival, the Comets finally started to pick it up toward the end of the season rising from as low as 25th in the AHL to as high as 16th before finishing T-18th at 16.1%. And while for the first four games they reverted to the same old impotency, they went 2 for 4 in Game 5, with Gaunce scoring both.
Now the storybook season continues for both the Comets and the small town fans that have captured the minds and hearts of all hockey. They open the Western Conference semi-finals against the Oklahoma City Barons at the Utica Aud on Thursday night, with Game 2 scheduled for Friday. The Barons limped into the playoffs, dropping down the standings like their parachute didn’t open as they free-fell from the top seed to the 6th, but then they swept the heavily favored San Antonio Rampage in the first round.
“The last time the Barons came into the Aud, they got smoked,” Moulton noted. “That first period alone where they out-shot the Barons 18-3 had to be the best opening period they’ve played all year. They dominated that game. They have the ability to overwhelm the Barons with that relentless attack.”
“That relentless attack” – that’s the mantra now, along with suffocating defense. That’s how to play fearlessly. Play with emotion, play physical, play smart, play fast. But most importantly, play fearlessly. You can’t win a championship in any sport by playing not to lose. The Comets are in charted territory now; each win is a new milestone. First playoff game at home, first playoff series win, first win in a deciding game: they are rewriting the record book nightly, and they are doing it with style, bouncing back from adversity and responding in the clutch.
So as the foghorn sounded it wasn’t so much a cheer that arose, but a thunderhead. It rose to its height, then gathered in waves surging, on and on throughout the mobbing of Markstrom in the net, the handshakes with the Wolves, and the victory lap around the logo, sticks raised in tribute to the 4,000 strong all clad in white – hockey’s newest great tradition. Play without fear, and you’ll meet at center ice for the celebration…and in Utica, what a heck of a celebration it will be.
NEWS, NOTES, AND QUOTES
Here’s a stat to mull as you all file into the Aud for Game 1 of the Western Conference semi-finals: the Comets and the Wolves entered their series undefeated over the entire season when leading games after two periods. The Comets stayed perfect in that stat, while the Wolves did not, (Game 3). There’s your metaphoric difference in the series.
