HARTFORD, Conn. _ Like their previous game Sunday and their parent club’s outing 24 hours earlier, the Connecticut Whale faced another “trap game” Wednesday night at the XL Center.
The Whale had lots of reasons not to bring their best after winning five in a row against the Springfield Falcons, who were on an 11-game losing streak that knocked them out of playoff contention again.
For the second time in four days, the Whale came out flat but recovered for a critical come-from-behind decision, as a brilliant individual move by All-Star right wing Jeremy Williams set up John Mitchell’s tie-breaking goal with 8:43 left in a 3-2 victory before 3,176.
Williams maneuvered his way around and through the Falcons’ line of former Hartford Wolf Pack captain Greg Moore, leading scorer Tomas Kubalik and Trevor Smith and then had the presence of mind to find Mitchell in the high slot as he was falling to the ice. Williams was looking for defenseman Wade Redden, who helped devise the faceoff play that set the winning goal in motion. But Mitchell intervened, putting a 30-foot shot between the legs of Falcons goalie Paul Dainton, making his AHL debut as he works on finishing his degree at the University of Massachusetts.
“I kind of blacked out there,” a smiling Williams said of his series of dipsy-doodle moves. “Redden said on the faceoff play we were going to with him going down the wall me popping out (to cover the point). It ended up happening three or four times on one shift where he played forward and I played defense. It was fortunate play where I found some room.
“A blind squirrel even finds a nut once in a while because that’s the most inconsistent part of my game. Sometimes I can see the holes, and sometimes I can’t. Fortunately I was able to have a little bit of vision there. I thought Reds was coming down and tried to move it over to him, but Mitch ended up going into the spot was Reds was. I putted where I wanted, but Mitchell stepped up.”
Mitchell said he thought his longtime friend who will be the best man in his wedding this summer was going to shoot, so he planned to go to the front of the net and wait for rebound or deflection. But when Williams got tangled up, Mitchell went to the net figuring he was going to pass to Redden. But with Redden having moved up, Mitchell planned to cover the point so he could backcheck if needed. But the puck popped loose, and Mitchell got off a clean shot.
“I just wanted to grab the puck, turn and shoot it as quickly as I could,” said Mitchell, acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs on Feb. 28 for a seventh-round pick in 2012. “That works out a lot of the time. Even in the NHL, goals are scored like that where guys just turn and shoot as quick as they can to surprise the goalie. That’s exactly what happened, but we have to be ready from the drop of the puck and be ready for the full 60 minutes. Desperation has kicked in, and the boys have responded well. That’s a bonus, but we want to go in ready from the get-go because that’s what it’s going to take to win games in the playoffs.”
The latest sagging start helped put the Whale (37-26-2-6) into a two-goal hole, but as they did Sunday in a 3-1 victory over the Falcons and the Rangers did Tuesday night in a 1-0 win over the Florida Panthers, they rallied from a sluggish beginning to win their fourth in a row and ninth in 11 starts to reach their high-water mark this season of 11 games over .500. They regained a four-point lead over the idle Worcester Sharks (33-26-4-8) in the battle for the third and final guaranteed spot in the Atlantic Division playoff race and remained one point in front of Binghamton (37-27-3-4), a 6-3 winner over Albany and fifth in the East Division in the fight for a possible crossover playoff berth. The crossover rule says the top four teams in the East Division and the top three in the Atlantic Division qualify for the playoffs, and the conference’s eighth and final spot will go to whichever has more points between the East’s fifth-place team and the Atlantic’s fourth-place club.
“We came out slow, but they came out hard and played very well and enthusiastically,” said Whale goalie Dov Grumet-Morris, who extended his AHL career-high winning streak to six games with 25 saves, including a game-saver off Moore with 4:09 left. “They certainly dominated the first half of the game, then we started to play in spurts and got some momentum at the end of the second period against a goalie who played an outstanding game and we were fortunate to have a great third period.”
The strong finish enabled the Whale to improve to 7-21-0-2 when trailing after two periods, but four of those wins have come in the last three weeks. The Whale are now 6-1-1-1 and have won six in a row against the Falcons (30-37-2-3), who are on a 0-11-1-0 slide since the loss of rugged wings Tom Sestito and former Wolf Pack captain Dane Byers via deals at the trade deadline. They were challenging for their first playoff berth since 2005 before the freefall dating to a 4-1 victory over Portland on Feb. 27. Their only point in the slump came March 5 in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Whale.
The first period resembled the opening 20 minutes Sunday, when the Whale came out sluggish but pulled out a win. This time, they were outshot 10-5 in the first period and never seriously threatened Dainton, who signed an amateur tryout contract Monday after finishing his career at UMass, where he was 6-18-5 with a 3.06 goals-against average and .908 save percentage with one shutout in 32 games this season.
“After winning three games in three nights and having a little break, you have to recapture that intensity,” Whale coach Ken Gernander said. “We had addressed that we wanted to have a much better start than (Sunday), but that wasn’t the case. But again the guys stuck with it and found a way to get the two points. If we want to make a run in the playoffs, we can’t wait until the second period to get going.”
Grumet-Morris made excellent stops off a wide-open Kyle Neuber at the left post at 6:21 and Petr Kalus in front with 3:44 left in the period. But the Falcons got the period’s only goal from one of Dainton’s former Hockey East rivals, left wing Wade McLeod, who also signed an ATO on Monday after completing his eligibility at Northeastern, where he led the Huskies in scoring the last three seasons, including career highs in goals (22), assists (23) and points (45) in 38 games this season. He scored in his first pro game when he took a long cross-ice pass from David Savard, skated into the left circle, outmaneuvered Tomas Kundratek and beat Grumet-Morris to the glove side with 1:58 left in the period.
The Whale heeded Gernander’s words during the first intermission to shoot more, and Dainton had to stop strong bids by Kris Newbury, Evgeny Grachev and Pavel Valentenko in the opening minute. Grumet-Morris then denied Kubalik breaking in off right wing at 1:28.
Then six seconds after the Falcons’ first power play expired, Cody Goloubef took a pass from Kubalik and fired a 40-foot shot that went past Grumet-Morris at 8:59 as he was being screened by Moore and Whale defenseman Stu Bickel.
The Whale finally showed some steady life, and Ryan Garlock picked off Theo Ruth’s pass in the neutral zone, skated into the Falcons’ zone and pushed the puck ahead to the right circle to Derek Couture, who beat Dainton to the far stick side at 11:52.
“Finally one goes in for me,” said Couture, who has had several excellent scoring chances since being called up from Victoria of the ECHL but had only scored when the opposition put the puck in its own net. “Keep shooting and they’re going to go in. It’s got to happen. I played the same way all the time, and if the goals go in, it’s kind of a bonus in my (checking) role. … It’s a good team to be on that builds throughout the game. You can tell that we just gradually took over that game. And night in and night out Dov keeps kicking for us.”
Grumet-Morris kept the Whale close when he stopped Trevor Frischmon’s shorthanded rush down left wing with 22.5 seconds left in the period. Given that reprieve, the Whale got even on the carryover power play into the third period, but it didn’t come easily. Dainton (31 saves) made a diving stop to smother Brodie Dupont’s rebound of Williams’ shot at 38 seconds. But 16 seconds later, Dale Weise got inside Nick Holden, kicked the puck to Newbury and then redirected his centering pass past Dainton to tie it.
“We had good pressure on the power play, and I just kind of redirected the puck to Newbs, who’s a good passer,” Weise said. “I beat my man to the net and he gave me a great pass.”
Then with the Whale on their third period rise, Grumet-Morris had Moore talking to himself as he stopped his rush down left wing at 2:54. He then somehow got his left pad on an even better bid off another left-wing rush while sprawled in the crease at 4:09, then stopped a secondary chance by Ben Guite.
“Moore made a great play to cut in and made a great move, and I got lucky and made a lucky save,” Grumet-Morris said. “That’s a standard desperation play all goalies do. That’s nothing special or unique to this level or myself. When he extends his hands to go around you, he loses the ability to lift the puck. When he goes to the full extension, I know he’s trying to go around me but he’s not going to be able to lift it, so I try to take away everything low.”
The Falcons pulled Dainton for a sixth attacker with 1:22 left, but the Whale didn’t allow a shot the rest of the way in notching yet another come-from-behind win.
“The third period is when this team just seems to come on and want to play, but that’s good and bad,” Weise said. “It’s good because no lead (for the opposition) is safe because we know we can come back, but you can’t spot good teams leads like that. These are big games and big points for us, and I don’t know why we’re not able to get up for them. They don’t mean as much to them as they do to us, but give them credit because they came out hard while playing for jobs.
“I don’t have the answer why we don’t have good starts, but at the end of the day, we got the two points and we’ll address that tomorrow.”
Again.
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