ALLEN, Texas – Game two of the Central Division Semi-Finals series was a dandy that required more than sixty minutes to find a victor as the Allen Americans and Tulsa Oilers became the first teams to go to overtime in this year’s ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs.
The Americans started strong, outshooting Tulsa in the first half of the opening period before Drew Fisher took over the show and registered a natural hat trick and shocked the Americans by giving the Oilers a strong 3-0 lead by the end of the frame.
A pair of Americans penalties gave Tulsa a 5-on-3 situation and Fisher made good use of the man advantage for the Oilers, notching his first goal at 12:01 while Jon Booras and Scott Macaulay chipped in the assists.
Shortly after, Fisher lit the lamp again off passes from Jeff Jubinville and Macaulay at the 13:44 mark giving the Oilers the 2-0 lead, both on the power play. The Drew Fisher show was capped off in the waning seconds when Fisher barreled in on the breakaway and slipped his third of the night past Joel Rumpel in the Americans net at 19:47. The Americans held the shot advantage at 12-8, but Tulsa held the valuable lead 3-0 at the first intermission.
Tulsa extended the lead past the midway point of the second period when Jubinville fired a rebound of an Adam Pleskach shot into the net at 11:30, giving the Oilers a commanding 4-0 lead. Allen, however, would respond in kind with a pair of goals before the period was over to cut the Tulsa lead in half and begin a dramatic comeback.
The Americans finally got on the board when Spencer Asuchak lit the lamp at 15:16, assisted by Chad Costello and Greger Hanson. Allen followed this up quickly with a power play goal by Konrad Abeltshauser just under two minutes later, as Hanson and Kevin Young earned the assists. Shots on net were tied in the frame at 15 apiece and Allen maintained the shot total lead by a small margin at 27-23.
That would be the closest the shot count would be the rest of the evening as Allen went on a full blitzkrieg, hammering Kevin Carr in the Tulsa net with 29 more shots over the next thirty minutes. The Oilers meanwhile, only managed a mere 7 shots on the Allen net in response.
Allen turned up the heat and was able to cut the Tulsa lead to just one when Gary Steffes scored at 11:27 with Costello and Aaron Gens earning the assists. Three minutes later, Abeltshauser sailed his second of the night past Carr to bring the game level with the help of Jamie Schaafsma and Asuchak. Tulsa scored four unanswered and Allen responded with four unanswered of their own, where the score remained tied through the balance of regulation. The Americans recorded an astonishing number of shots in the final frame, outshooting Tulsa 21-6 and owning the shot total over three periods of play at 48-29.
Once again in overtime, it was all Allen as they hammered the net 8 more times before driving home the finisher on a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play between Abeltshauser and Dyson Stevenson that Hanson completed by ripping one into the back of the net at 9:41. Again, Allen outshot the Oilers by a count of 8-1 and a game total of 56-30.
The three stars of the game were as follows: 1. Greger Hanson (1G, 2A), 2. Konrad Abeltshauser (2G, 1A), 3. Drew Fisher (3G).
Allen now leads the series 2-0 as the series transitions to Oklahoma with game three on Friday night at the BOK Center, the puck drop is scheduled for 7:35pm.
Contact the writer: maurice.fitzgerald@prohockeynews.com
Contact the photographer: Kimberly.Sauer@prohockeynews.com
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