The Joy of Six – Utica Comets Shut out Grand Rapids 2-0, win series 4-2 to advance to Calder Cup Finals
By Jay Flemma, Special to Facewash Magazine
UTICA, NY – The long sports winter may soon be over for Utica, New York as their beloved Comets defeated the Grand Rapids Griffins 2-0 in Game 6 of the AHL Western Conference Finals, taking the series 4-2. Goalie Jacob Markstrom stopped all 21 shots he faced, posting his second consecutive shutout in a series clinching game, (he shut out the Oklahoma City Barons 1-0 in Game 7 of the previous series), while Cory Conacher scored on a slap shot from the right circle at 3:16 of the second period for the game-winner. Alexander Grenier tallied an empty netter on a mad scramble in the Griffins’ end with 1:14 left in the game to close out the scoring.
It’s been 45 years since Uticans savored the sweet taste of victory champagne. Back then it was the Clinton Comets winning back-to-back-to-back EHL titles from 1968-70. Sure there was another Mohawk Valley team that won a lower league title back in the early ’80s, but sports glory at the highest level the city can aspire to has eluded Uticans for four-and-a-half decades. Now this incarnation of the Comets stands looks to hang the first championship banner from the rafters of the venerable old Utica Memorial Auditorium since the days of Bill Bannerman and Jack Kane.
Pretty good for a team in only the second season of their existence and which lost the first 12 games it ever played.
“You can’t overstate what this team has done for the area,” said hockey expert Bruce Moulton. The Comets are the darlings of hockey right now.” They’ll open the Calder Cup finals in Manchester, NH against the Monarchs, the AHL’s highest point scoring team this season. Games 1 and 2 are this Saturday and Sunday. Games 3-5 will be in Utica on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday June 10, 12, and 13. Games 6 and 7, if necessary, are back in Manchester June 16 and 17.
Game 6 against the Griffins was a microcosm of the series. The Comets were a boa constrictor, slowly squeezing the supposedly faster more skillful Griffins with suffocating defense, relentless backchecks, and the ever-present threat of a breakaway. The Comets limited the Griffins, the AHL’s most potent offense this season, to just 10 shots in the first two periods.
“As a series goes on…When you wear a team down, and you’ve got the lead, your team gets some energy….And it set us up so we had a lot of energy left,” said Comets coach Travis Green. “We had more pushback tonight.”
Meanwhile, Markstrom was impregnable. None of his 21 saves to night were as jaw-dropping as the two he made in Game 5, one of which was Number 1 on SportsCenter’s Top Plays, but he’s gotten stronger as the playoffs have gone on, saving his absolute best for the clutch. He has not surrendered a 3rd period goal in any of the clinching games of the first three series.
“We’re all in it together, but you don’t go anywhere this time of year without a good goalie, and he played another great game tonight,” admired Green with a grateful grin. “Another shutout in a deciding game…”
“He’s the Great Wall of Sweden,” joked Conacher at the post-game presser, as 6’7″ Markstrom left the podium to the 5’8″ forward. Then Conacher looked out at the crowd of journalists and quipped, “You guys better lower the camera a little for me.” It took two full minutes before everyone stopped laughing. When they stand together, they do look like Gandalf and Frodo.
Still, Conacher plays so much larger than his size, both literally and metaphorically. It was his fourth goal of the playoffs and he leads the AHL playoffs in shots. He also gets under the skin of the other team better than almost anyone in the AHL.
“There they go after Conacher again,” was a common refrain throughout the playoffs, as team after team, player after player, facewashed, elbowed, and slashed him. He was sporting a shiner under his left eye at the press conference, along with his trademark ear to ear grin, broader still under the circumstances.
“He’s a scorer. He’s got four goals, he’s got a big shot….he’s got three goals in his last four games,” Green stated, praising Conacher for his talent and his work ethic.
The other late season acquisitions were critical too. Speedy stickhandler Sven Baertschi has six goals and seven assists in the playoffs, including a hat trick in Game 3 against the Griffins, while gritty defenseman Adam Clendening has three goals and three assists. Their addition, along with Conacher made the Comets explosive offensively – they facet they needed to temper their one weakness and make the jump from contender to juggernaut.
“Every team needs the piece,” explained Stanley Cup winning coach Dan Byslma describing Bill Guerin’s addition to the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins, who upset mighty Detroit for the title. Conacher, Baertschi, and Clendening were “the pieces” for the Comets.
“Someone in the Canucks front office is a genius, because they brought in exactly what the Comets needed. Hand…meet glove,” said Moulton.
“The best defense is a good offense,” explained markstrom, but in this case, I don’t agree. That’s just Marky being a team player and spreading around the glory, well deserved, of course, by the rest of the squad, their whole being far grater than the sum of their prodigious parts. But the Comets d swarmed all over the more offensively potent Griffins with defense, and defense wins championships.
Now Utica enters what Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson called “the Vortex” – that moment in sports that acts like the event horizon of a black hole. Only swirling at the center of the maelstrom that will be the Verizon Center and Utica Aud sits the Calder Cup, and the chance of a parade down Genesee Street, followed by the biggest Fireworks Over Utica ever.
Light the blue touch paper and stand clear.
Singing and cheering erupt form the locker room. You can hear them all the way down the corridor and throughout the hallways. Darren Archibald is bringing them together with a rousing speech, punctuated by roars. Hunter Shinkaruk is jumping on Cal and riding him like American Pharoah. And Frankie Corrado is beaming ear to ear while hugging a nattily-dressed Alex Friesen. The magical glow has radiated out all across the region, the entire town painted blue and green.
“It’s close now,” chants Comets fan Alex Randazzo, with a look approaching rapture on his face. “It’s so close I can taste it…”
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF LINDSAY MOGLE AND UTICA COMETS
