The Cleveland Monsters beat the Grand Rapids Griffins (51-16-4-1) 6-4 on Sunday afternoon at Rocket Arena. With the win, the Monsters are now 37-26-6-3 and finish the regular season in third place in the AHL’s North Division standings.
Cleveland’s Mikael Pyyhtiä got the scoring started with a short-handed marker at 2:26 in the first assisted by Stanislav Svozil but Grand Rapids’ Dylan James responded with a tally of his own at 4:33 to make the score 1-1 going into the second. Griffins’ Dylan James opened the middle frame with a goal at 0:21 followed by an additional tally from Jesse Kiiskinen at 4:45 to put Grand Rapids up 3-1. Monsters’ Pyyhtiä captured his second of the night at 7:57 while on the man-advantage with helpers from Luca Del Bel Belluz and Jack Williams followed by a goal from Justin Pearson at 10:17 off assists from Hudson Fasching and Svozil to level the score, but Griffins’ Alex Doucet notched a tally at 14:28, giving Grand Rapids a 4-3 lead through 40 minutes. Cleveland tied the game at 7:09 of the final frame when Luca Pinelli scored thanks to helpers from Brendan Gaunce and Will Butcher before veteran forward Zach Aston-Reese notched the game-winning strike at 13:29 of the the third on feeds from Pinelli and Corson Ceulemans. An unassisted empty-net score from Gaunce at 18:12 sealed a 6-4 win for Cleveland.
Cleveland’s Zach Sawchenko stopped 3 shots and Ivan Fedotov stopped 11 shots for the win while Grand Rapids’ Sebastian Cossa made 19 saves and Trey Augustine made 10 saves in defeat.
