The Toronto Maple Leafs‘ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, the Toronto Marlies, continues to prove they are an elite team this season, picking up five out of a possible six points over three games this week. From thrilling overtime finishes to a rare West Coast matchup, the team showed its ability to compete under adversity.
A franchise-record fifth-consecutive overtime game saw the Marlies rally back against the Hershey Bears, led by a clutch performance from Alex Nylander. They followed up with a commanding shutout win against the San Jose Barracuda, only to fall short in a rematch shootout.
With injuries and call-ups thinning their roster, unsung heroes like Sam Stevens and Zach Solow stepped up, while goaltenders Dennis Hildeby and Artur Akhtyamov kept their team in every game. Here’s how the week unfolded and what’s next for this determined Marlies squad.
Game One: Marlies 4, Hershey Bears 3 (OT)
The Marlies had their game go into overtime for a franchise record fifth time in a row. Hildeby allowed the first three goals in a game for his second start in a row and then settled down to shut out the opponent the rest of the way, allowing the Marlies to come back and tie the game. The last time that happened was last Saturday versus the Belleville Senators when the game went to a 12-round shootout before the Senators won the game when the 24th shooter put one past Hildeby. The Marlies came out on top this time when Nylander sent Nick Abruzzese in alone on Hershey goalie Hunter Shepard 47 seconds into the extra period. Abruzzese beat Shepard with a wrist shot glove side to complete the comeback.
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Goals by Mike Sgarbossa, Brennan Saulnier, and Luke Philp in the first period gave the Bears a 3-0 lead and they were skating circles around the Marlies. It appeared at that time that without Alex Steeves, Fraser Minton, and Nikita Grebenkin in the lineup, along with the injured Cedric Pare and Joseph Blandisi, the Marlies would be no match for the two-time defending AHL champion. They seemed resigned to their fate, and the score was 3-0 for the first 14 minutes of the second period. With 5:18 left in the second period, Solow batted a rebound of a shot by Sam Stevens past Shepard to give Toronto some life.
Then, with seven seconds left in the period, the Marlies dumped the puck into the Hershey zone on a harmless-looking play. Three Bears players lazily converged on the puck, probably thinking they would kill the clock to end the period. Braeden Kressler had other ideas as he bore down hard on Ethan Bear. Bear tried to bank the puck off the boards and out of the zone, but it bounced off Roni Hirvonen’s skate and went right to Nylander. Before Shepard could react, Nylander snapped the puck past him into the net with just 1.3 seconds left on the clock.
That gave the Marlies a renewed life. They came out in the third and continuously pressed for the equalizer. The Bears did a pretty good job thwarting the Marlies’ offense, as Toronto only managed to get five actual shots on net in the period. A tripping penalty by Henrik Rybinski midway through the period was the Bears’ undoing. With just three seconds left with the man advantage, a screened shot by Nylander from the top of the faceoff circle to the right of Shepard found the twine. Solow and Jacob Quillan were making life difficult for Shepard, preventing him from seeing the puck before it was too late.
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With Steeves, Minten, and Grebenkin all up with the Maple Leafs, the Marlies needed Nylander to step up and put the team on his back, and he did that by scoring two goals, including the tying goal, and setting up Abruzzese for the winner. Solow, a healthy scratch for most of this season, added a goal and an assist. Despite giving up three goals in his last three starts and allowing Toronto to go down 3-0 in his previous two starts, Hildeby does not have a regulation loss in the AHL this season as he upped his record to 2-0-2 in four starts.
Game Two: Marlies 3, San Jose Barracuda 0
The AHL has 32 teams across North America. It is a continental league. However, unlike the NHL, teams don’t travel coast to coast often. They play the majority of their games against their closest geographical rivals. The teams don’t have the budget to have their players flying all over Canada and the USA. Most of the teams get to their out-of-town games by bus. Nor will you will see a team from the East play a team from the West Coast that often. The Marlies already hosted the San Diego Gulls for a two-game set to start the season. Now, for the first time in franchise history, they were set to host the San Jose Barracuda.
Fortunately for Nylander but unfortunately for the Marlies, he joined Steeves, Minton, and Grebenkin with the big team due to his excellent performance and another Maple Leafs’ injury. That left the Marlies to have to dig into Toronto’s ECHL affiliate Cincinnati Cyclones for reinforcements.
As you might expect, with two teams playing each other for the first time, this was a slow-paced, tight-checking game for the most part. The two teams seemed to be feeling each other out. After a plodding start, the Marlies gradually took over the play as the first period continued. The 24-year-old Stevens, a Montreal native signed as an unrestricted free agent out of Boston College in the offseason, scored his first AHL goal to give the Marlies a 1-0 lead at 14:28 in the first period. Stevens batted in his rebound after taking a pass from Logan Shaw while fighting for ice in front of San Jose goalie Georgi Romanov.
The second period started like the first, with neither team getting much going offensively. But again, the Marlies gradually took over the play as the period continued. At 10:33 of the period, Hirvonen deflected a pass from Abruzzese through Romanov’s legs into the net to give Toronto a 2-0 lead. The shots after two periods were 27-15 Marlies.
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The Barracuda put pressure on to get on the board throughout the third period. Still, the Marlies played well defensively, and starter Akhtyamov made the saves he needed to preserve his second shutout. After San Jose pulled their goalie with three minutes left in the third period and the Barracuda buzzing in the Marlies’ end of the ice, Quillan got his stick on the puck and sent Ryan Tverberg down the ice alone. Tverberg deposited the puck into the empty cage to complete the scoring at 3-0.
Akhtyamov has had a stellar debut in North American professional hockey, raising his record to 6-0-1 in seven starts with a .935 save percentage and a 1.65 goals against average.
Game Three: San Jose Barracuda 2, Marlies 1 (SO)
For the sixth time in seven games, the Marlies went past regulation time. This game had more pace than Saturday’s contest, but neither team could muster much in the name of offense. After 30 minutes of play, the shots were just 11-8 San Jose.
As the second period was winding down, Barracuda goalie Gabriel Carriere stopped a one-time blast from Abruzzese but couldn’t control the rebound. Stevens jammed it past Carriere to put the Marlies up 1-0 with just seven seconds on the clock.
The game opened up in the third as San Jose pressed to even the game while the Marlies tried to notch an insurance goal. The Barracuda knotted the score at 9:40 when Danil Gushchin caught Marlies goalie Matt Murray by surprise with a wrong-angle shot from a few feet out from the goal line along the boards to Murray’s left. The TV cameras failed to show how the puck got through Murray, but it did. Murray only gave up one goal in 65 minutes of action; we’re sure he would like to have that back.
After regulation ended 1-1 and the overtime solved nothing, the game went to a shootout. Unlike the Marlies’ last shootout, which took 24 attempts to end, this was over quickly. Kressler and Shaw failed in their attempts, while Barracuda’s Gushchin and Andrew Poturalski scored on theirs to win San Jose.
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Steven’s made the most of his chance to finally get into the lineup with two goals and an assist in the three games. Abruzzese (1G, 2A), Nylander (2G,1A), and Cade Webber (3A) all had a three-point week. Webber only had one assist in his first 12 games with the Marlies before collecting three assists in these three games. Hirvonen was the only player to tally more than a point, as he notched a goal and an assist.
What’s Next for the Marlies?
Despite only having one regulation loss in 16 games, the Marlies are tied for second place in the North Division with the Cleveland Monsters with 25 points, two less than the division-leading Laval Rocket. Toronto does have a game in hand over both teams. They play their next three games on the road against both teams, one in Cleveland and two in Laval.
In a bizarre part of the AHL schedule, the Marlies only play one game this weekend: Friday night in Cleveland. They don’t play again until Friday, Dec. 6, and Saturday, Dec. 7, in Laval.
[Note: I want to thank long-time Maple Leafs fan Stan Smith for collaborating with me on this post. Stan’s Facebook profile can be found here.]
