FORT WAYNE, IN – When a sports team has been around as long as the ECHL’s Fort Wayne Komets have, it is expected that along the way it will win a league championship or more. In the case of the Komets, playing in five different leagues certainly should have made it more difficult.
Friday night at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, Fort Wayne found a way in this most irregular of seasons to collect the 10th championship spanning two incarnations of the Komets.
Kelly Cup Final MVP Stephen Harper scored both goals and goalie Dylan Ferguson stopped 26 of 27 shots to lead the Komets to a 2-1 victory over the South Carolina Stingrays in front of a raucous sellout crowd of 10,477. In winning the best-of-five series by a three games to one count, Fort Wayne picked up its first ECHL crown since joining the league for the 2012-13 season.
Justin Florek scored the lone goal for South Carolina, which qualified to the postseason on the next to last day of the regular season before knocking off the top two seeds in the Eastern conference. Netminder Hunter Shepard played valiantly between the pipes for the Stingrays, making 23 saves on 25 shots faced to give his team a chance to extend the series one more game.
Since 1952, Fort Wayne has had a long and storied history. The original Komets played in the original International Hockey League until 1990, winning championships in 1963, 1965 and 1973. That version was moved to Albany, NY in 1990, leading to the Franke family to create a new Komets team out of the Flint Spirits who were bought and moved. The second incarnation won the IHL crown in 1993.
In 1999, the Komets moved over to the United Hockey League, winning a championship in 2003. By 2007, the decision was made to rename the league as the second version of the IHL after the Frankes spearheaded the purchase of the IHL name and record book. Fort Wayne won all three titles that the IHL had before it folded, allowing the Komets to join the Central Hockey League in 2010. The CHL lasted for two more seasons (with Fort Wayne being crowned the champs in 2012) prior to the CHL and ECHL merged into a single double-A league for the 2012-13 season.
Friday night’s tilt was all that could be asked of a playoff battle. The first period was a scoreless one. South Carolina had to weather some less-than stellar play early but Shepard held the Komets at bay. When the Stingrays found their way, Ferguson was called on to make several big stops to deny the visitors any advantage. By the end of the frame, South Carolina had an 11-10 shots advantage, neither team had a power play opportunity to show and the scoreboard was deadlocked at 0-0.
South Carolina opened the middle frame pressing on the Komets and it nearly worked. A particularly hard push by the Stingrays led to an opportunity where Cole Ully found himself with the puck on his stick and an open side of the net to fire at. Unfortunately for Ully, his shot was rushed by a pair of defenders, the puck was bouncing and the shot hit the post before being cleared away.
That missed chance came back to hurt the Stingrays really bad when at the 8:16 mark, a Komets flurry around Shepard led to Harper collecting a loose puck at the top of the crease and shooting it over the South Carolina netminder for his fifth postseason tally. Harper later picked up his second goal of the night and sixth of the playoffs when teammate Randy Gazzola made a cross-ice pass for Harper to one-time home from the base of the faceoff circle to Shepard’s left side.
South Carolina did not go quietly into the night, climbing back into the contest before the second period was done. With just over two minutes to go before the intermission the Stingrays were able to fling the puck at the Fort Wayne net. Florek was waiting for it but at the last second a defender challenged the play. Florek was able to pop the puck into the air and batted it past Ferguson for his fourth playoff tally to make it a 2-1 game heading to the final twenty minutes.
The third period was a classic defensive struggle. Neither team wanted to give up the next goal and every player knew it. Shots in net were at a premium as the defenses, particularly the Komets, did everything they could to not allow the opposition to score. In fact, South Carolina was only able to record three shots for the entire final stanza while Fort Wayne mustered just seven with neither side collecting a shot in the final four minutes of action.
The visitors’ hopes took a major hit a little over four minutes remaining. The sequence started when South Carolina’s Max Gottlieb got a little too loose with his stick, clipping Fort Wayne captain A.J. Jenks in the face. As the play continued, an offside was whistled but Jenks continued through, decking the Stingrays’ Zach Malatesta with a hard hit. Gottlieb then went after Jenks, landing a cross check that sent Jenks to the ice before needing assistance getting to the bench. Gottlieb was assessed a major penalty and a game misconduct while the Komets’ Matthew Boudens was tapped for a roughing minor (Jenks stayed on the bench and was not hit with a penalty). The offsetting calls gave Fort Wayne a three-minute major power play that allowed the Komets to kill off most of the remaining time.
When the final buzzer sounded, there was a celebration on the ice that was matched by the one going on in the stands. Harper, who finished the postseason with six goals (tied for second in the league) and 13 points (tied for the league lead with teammate Anthony Nellis who tallied eight goals and five assists), was named the winner of the June M. Kelly Most Valuable Player award before Commissioner Emeritus Patrick Kelly handed his namesake trophy to Jenks and the Komets to skate in front of their adoring fans.
Notes: South Carolina finished the night 0-for-1 on the power play while Fort Wayne went 0-for-2… Brandon Hawkins led the Komets in the championship series with four goals and three assists for seven points… Ully led the Stingrays with one goal and four assists for five points in the final series… The 10,477 was the sixth-largest crowd to attend Riley/Kelly Cup finals contest in league history… South Carolina is now 3-3 in championship series.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
Follow us on Twitter @prohockeynews
You must be logged in to post a comment.