Kalamazoo sweeps Reading, move to Conference Finals

KALAMAZOO, Mich. – Last year the Reading Royals shook hands with a defeated Kalamazoo Wings team in the first round of the Kelly Cup playoffs. This year, the Kalamazoo Wings found revenge and placed a final exclamation mark on the dominant offensive hockey that led them to a four-games-to-none sweep of their conference rivals.
It wasn’t easy though.
The Royals gave the home team precious little to celebrate Friday night until the final horn sounded on the 5-4 victory somewhere under the roar of the home team fans.
“They’ve been resilient all series. Every time we get a lead they come right back,” said Kalamazoo forward Dean Strong who led the game with two goals and an assist. “They took us right to the end.”
Coming out of the locker room, the Royals put on a show in the first period and for the first time in the series, the Royals struck first when defenseman Ryan Donald dumped an innocent-looking wrist shot through a crowd for the lead.
Despite the Royals highly physical, dominant play through most of the first period, Kalamazoo Head Coach Nick Bootland never worried about his team playing on their heels.
“We talked about that in the morning skate,” he said. “We said: ‘Listen. We’ve had the lead or been tied most of this series so we have to be prepared that we could be down tonight. These guys are going to throw everything they have at us.’”
Kalamazoo found their legs late in the period, tying the game with just over three minutes remaining thanks to a Sam Ftorek slap shot from the blue line after a long shift of pressure in the Reading zone.
From there the game turned into old-fashioned shootout as the teams combined for four goals in the final 3:13 of the first period.
Only six seconds after Ftorek’s goal, Reading forward Chris Blight quieted the still-cheering crowd with a soft rebound shot over the head of goaltender Ryan Nie.
Back the other way, Patrick Asselin brought the score back to even 58 seconds later. Defenseman Ryan McGinnis capped the intensity, scoring the leading goal from the left circle with only 3.8 seconds remaining in the period.
Bootland, usually critical of offense-only hockey, turned a different tune after the game.
“We certainly have to tighten things up going forward but the fortunate part of winning four straight is that we’ll have some time to do that,” Bootland said.
Kalamazoo never manged to grab a comfortable lead for the rest of the game.
Strong scored the first of his two goals in the second period, picking up a loose puck on the backdoor of goaltender Matt Dalton and popping it easily into the empty net.
Only 13 seconds later Yannick Riendeau pulled the Royals back within one goal.
Strong scored his second goal of the night in the third period, scooping a spin-around backhand over the left shoulder of Dalton but again watched from the bench as the Royals fought back 2:48 later off a goal from Matt Caruana.
With Dalton pulled for the extra attacker in the final 1:30 of play, the K-Wings held on for the hectic victory.
Reading Head Coach Larry Courville tipped his hat to Kalamazoo.
“We didn’t have the breaks. They played really well. They deserved to win, they played better than us all series,” he said. “They’re a very good team.”
Dalton made 38 saves after making 28 saves the night before despite not starting the game.
“We didn’t help him out that much,” Courville said. “I’ve seen him play better but we didn’t help him that much. I’m not going to look at Dalton and blameDalton, I’ll probably blame 18 guys that played. We all could have played better.”
A dejected Dalton had little to say after the loss.
“They have a good team over there. They have a lot of goal scorers. I knew they were going to get a lot of shots. They have a lot of firepower, you have to give them credit,” Dalton said.
“It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Contact the writer: Ryan.Loren@ProHockeyNews.com   Contact the photographer at Larry.Burdick@prohockeynews.com