EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Every spring, hockey teams around North America trot out the tried-and-true “March to the Playoffs” marketing slogan because the regular season’s stretch run kicks into high gear in the month of March.
This spring, while other teams were “marching,” the Evansville IceMen were stumbling. Then when the playoffs arrived, they fell flat on their collective face.
Evansville’s first Central Hockey League post-season appearance was a painfully short one – more of a cameo, really. The team’s playoff run only lasted four games, and you could certainly argue that the IceMen only actually “showed up” for three.
The second-seed IceMen earned home-ice advantage against the third-seed Missouri Mavericks, but the series began in Missouri due to arena scheduling conflicts. Instead of a standard 2-2-1-1-1 or 2-3-2 format, the series was slated for a bizarre 1-2-1-1-1-1 format, starting in Missouri.
Many initially questioned how the unusual schedule might ultimately affect the outcome. In the end, it didn’t really matter because one team was clearly superior to the other.
Riding red-hot goaltender Charlie Effinger and entering the playoffs with the league’s longest end-of-season winning streak (4 games), Missouri took full advantage of starting the post-season on home ice.
The Mavericks scored just 8:30 into Game 1 and opened up a 3-1 lead 5:51 into the second period, then held off a spirited IceMen comeback bid to hang on for a series-opening 3-2 victory. Effinger finished with 35 saves for the Mavericks, while Pier-Olivier Pelletier made 29 saves in defeat for Evansville.
As the action shifted to Evansville for Game 2, the IceMen seemingly left their “game” in Missouri. The Mavericks converted an Evansville turnover into a 1-0 lead just 1:44 into the game, and never looked back. The Missouri lead ballooned to 3-0 by the end of the first period, as a lackadaisical IceMen squad repeatedly broke down in the defensive zone.
Searching for a spark, Evansville Head Coach Rich Kromm replaced goaltender Bryan Gillis with Pelletier to start the second period. The veteran temporarily stopped the bleeding and held Missouri scoreless in the middle frame, but then the floodgates opened in the third period. The Mavericks managed to light the lamp four more times, en route to a dominant 7-1 victory. Effinger made 28 saves in the lopsided win; Gillis and Pelletier combined to stop 30 of 37 Missouri shots.
Hoping to shake off their brutal Game 2 performance and climb back into the series, the IceMen brought a much-improved effort and far more energy in Game 3.
Evansville had 8 shots on goal before Missouri got its first, more than 12 minutes into the game. With 4:42 left in the first period, Josh Beaulieu gave the IceMen their first lead of the series with a blistering shot through traffic from the high slot. Missouri evened the score at 7:35 in the second stanza, but Matt Pierce answered for Evansville just 56 seconds into the third period. However, the Mavericks’ Sebastien Thinel forced Overtime with a clutch goal at 16:51 in the third.
Already down 2-0 in the series, the IceMen knew that the extra session’s “sudden-death” format carried added importance in Game 3. Evansville performed accordingly, dominating in Overtime and again generating eight shots before Missouri’s first. But with 5:17 left in the opening session of “bonus hockey,” Ed McGrane converted on the Mavericks’ first quality scoring chance – a 2-on-1 created when an Evansville dump-in attempt ricocheted off of a Missouri player’s legs and back out into the neutral zone – and escaped with a 3-2 victory. Effinger made 34 saves, while Pelletier finished with 25.
With Game 4 back in Missouri, the IceMen simply hoped to avoid being swept. The ultimate goal was a miraculous comeback with four straight victories, but you must win one before you can win four.
Unfortunately for Evansville, the IceMen couldn’t even do that. Missouri jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the opening period, and maintained that margin until midway through the third period when Todd Robinson got Evansville on the board. The IceMen fought hard in the final frame, out-shooting the Mavericks 15-5. But Effinger was again up to the task, and Thinel iced the series with a late empty-net goal to secure the 3-1 victory and the sweep for Missouri. Effinger made 39 saves, while Pelletier had 30.
And just like that, a season that once held so much promise for the Evansville IceMen came to an abrupt and disappointing conclusion.
In a four-game series that lasted a total of 254 minutes and 43 seconds, the IceMen held a lead just twice for a total of 28 minutes and 12 seconds, all in Game 3.
The series played out in just six calendar days, starting on March 28th and ending on April 2nd. When it ended, the CHL’s other three opening-round matchups had only completed 2 games each.
Effinger was clearly the MVP of the series, a huge difference-maker in net for Missouri. He finished the series with a microscopic 1.43 Goals-Against Average and a stellar .958 Save Percentage. A hot goaltender is generally the ultimate “trump card” in the playoffs, and Effinger was indeed that against the IceMen, who outshot Missouri in three of the four games.
But Effinger was not the only reason Evansville’s season ended with such a resounding THUD. He was just the exclamation mark at the end of a closing statement that was being written for weeks.
So what went wrong? How did a team that was atop the entire league in late February end up crashing and burning so violently?
Leap Day.
Following a February 26th victory at Dayton, the IceMen had won 10 straight, the longest winning streak by any team in the CHL all season. Evansville’s record stood at 36-13-4, good for 76 points – seven points ahead of the Fort Wayne Komets in the Turner Conference standings and two points better than the Wichita Thunder, who were leading the Berry Conference. The IceMen were flying high and on top of the CHL.
Then the Thunder came to town on February 29th for a battle of conference kingpins. Evansville dominated much of the game, prompting one local reporter to say that Wichita really did not look like a first-place team. The IceMen built a 5-2 lead early in the third period, seemingly on their way to an 11th straight victory in a “statement game” against arguably the CHL’s best team.
And then the wheels fell off.
Wichita stormed back with five unanswered goals in a span of just 8:31, later adding an empty-netter for good measure. What appeared to be a comfortable Evansville victory suddenly and shockingly morphed into a disheartening 8-5 loss.
After the game, IceMen Head Coach Rich Kromm told the Evansville Courier & Press that “It’s never easy to forget a game like this.”
That proved to be an alarmingly true statement, because the Leap Day debacle set off a downward spiral from which the IceMen would never escape.
Evansville lost its next four games, then lost leading goal scorer Brian Bicek to a broken collarbone. The injury happened during a March 8th practice, when Bicek and teammate John Ronan collided at the end of a routine drill. Losing Bicek only made “righting the ship” that much more difficult.
The IceMen went 4-4-0 as the regular season concluded, although a pair of those victories came via shootout. Then came the playoff sweep at the hands of the Mavericks.
Bicek’s injury undoubtedly played a role in the team’s late-season meltdown, but Evansville had already lost five straight before “Ice Bice Baby” was lost for the season.
Clearly, Leap Day was the turning point. A team that had been on such an incredible roll suddenly lost its “mojo.” The energy wasn’t the same, the attitude wasn’t the same, and the team’s play at both ends of the ice suffered.
In the season’s first 53 games, the IceMen scored 3.47 goals per game and allowed just 2.64 goals per game. In the 12 regular-season games that followed the February 29 collapse, Evansville’s offensive output dropped to 2.58 goals per game, while the Team GAA spiked to 3.67. And the numbers were even worse in the team’s abbreviated playoff run – 1.50 goals per game versus 4.00 goals allowed per game.
For the IceMen players, the Leap Day loss stuck in the back of their minds – perhaps just subconsciously – like peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth.
It took less than one period of poor play to completely derail the IceMen train. The wheels fell off on February 29. By season’s end, the cars had tipped over and tumbled down a ravine, leaving a tangled mess of smoldering metal that barely resembled the powerhouse that once chugged through 10 consecutive victories.
And now, Evansville fans must wait through an agonizingly long off-season. In the coming months, Kromm will build a new train for next season. And he, along with all of the IceMen Maniacs, will hope that the next one manages to stay on the tracks until a post-season championship has been claimed.
Contact the writer at michael.shockley@prohockeynews.com
