NORFOLK, Vir – The St. John’s IceCaps were on the receiving end of a rare thrashing Thursday night, as they were dumped 6-1 by the Norfolk Admirals in game one of the teams’ best-of-seven AHL Eastern Conference final.
It was the IceCaps most lopsided loss of the 2012 Calder Cup playoffs. Afterward, all they could do was speak to the talent level of the team that had thoroughly beat them.
“That’s just a skilled team over there,” IceCaps forward Garth Murray told the Virginian-Pilot. “You aren’t going to be able to let up for a second.”
The Admirals were the AHL’s top team in the regular season. Not only did the lead the AHL with 55 wins and 113 points, they also set a league record by winning 29 consecutive games. However, as impressive as the Admirals’ record is, St. John’s head coach Keith McCambridge insisted after game one that the one-sided outcome had as much to do with the IceCaps’ mistakes as it did the Admirals’ execution.
“We didn’t bring our best game, obviously. I thought they picked up the pace of the game and executed better than us and you saw the result in the score,” McCambridge told www.stjohnsicecaps.com.
The Admirals took a 1-0 lead with a power play goal from Mike Kostka at 18:55 of the first period, and then used three-second period goals to take control of the game. Michel Ouellet (3:08, PP), Kostka (11:04) and Jean-Philippe Cote (13:42) had the second-period markers for Norfolk.
In the third period Ondrej Palat put Norfolk up 5-0 just 1:28 into the frame, before Zach Redmond got St. John’s on the scoreboard with a power play goal at 2:11. Keith Aulie’s goal at 7:21 of the third made the final score 6-1 in favor of the Admirals.
Dustin Tokarski stopped 29 shots to record the win in net for Norfolk. Eddie Pasquale started the game for St. John’s, but was lifted at 13:32 of the second period after giving up four goals on 21 shots. He was replaced by David Aebischer, who made 10 saves in his first appearance of the postseason.
The second game of the series goes tonight in Norfolk. From the IceCaps perspective, it is now a matter of putting game one behind them and focusing on game two of the conference final.
“It’s not a one-game series; it’s a seven-game series. Our objective right now is we’d like to focus on getting the split out of here,” McCambridge told www.stjohnsicecaps.com. “With that being said, we have a chance to regroup and get focused on what we need to do. I know that group in there and that team realizes what they put on the ice (Thursday) isn’t close to good enough for this time of the year.”
Contact Darcy.MacRae@prohockeynews.com
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