FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The Fort Wayne Komets completed their opening round sweep of the Bloomington PrairieThunder on Wednesday night with a 6-3 win in front of a home crowd of 7,297. 
The Komets will advance to the Semi-Finals where they will take on the top-seeded Rapid City Rush, pitting the 2010 CHL Champions against the 2010 IHL Champions in the best-of-5 series. Both teams swept their way through the opening round with the Komets toppling the Prairie Thunder and the Rush dismissing the Dayton Gems. The Komets, winners of the last three IHL Turner Cup championships, had a difficult adjustment to the Central Hockey League, losing 16 of their first 21 contests and finishing 31-27-8 for the sixth seed in the conference. The PrairieThunder on the other hand, arguably had the best season of their five year history, going 37-22-7 to place third in the Turner Conference and earning their first trip to the post-season. They were 7-3-0 against Fort Wayne during the regular season, but none of it mattered after Wednesday night’s loss. Fort Wayne center Mathieu Curadeau established himself as the star of the Komets-PrairieThunder series, scoring eight points (4 G, 4 A, +4) on just 12 shots in three games.
Kaleigh Schrock
Curadeau opened the scoring in game three with his second short-handed goal of the post-season at the 3:10 mark of the opening period, on a feed from defenseman Guy Dupuis. Bloomington battled back through, and six minutes later tied the game when Brodie Sheahan tied it up with a shot from the right circle at the 9:10 mark. Fort Wayne out shot Bloomington in every frame and had a 14-9 shot advantage after 20 minutes. Karl Fournier gave Bloomington their first lead of the series, scoring on an odd-man rush 2:43 into the middle frame with assists from Keith Rodger and Jason Dale. Fort Wayne’s veteran defenseman Guy Dupuis scored the tying goal at the 13:09 mark of the period, with a little help from Frankie DeAngelis and Colin Chaulk. As The Journal Gazette’s Justin Cohn points out, it was the Komets’ first goal in the series with the teams skating 5-on-5 (the Komets outscored the PrairieThunder 14-6 with five power-play goals, two short-handed goals and three empty netters). Locked up at 2-2 after 40 minutes of play, the Komets came out firing in the final 20 with Artem Podshendyalov scoring on a breakaway to regain the lead at 3-2 at the 4:25 mark. Frankie DeAngelis followed with his first goal of the series just over two minutes later, giving the home team a 4-2 lead.
Nick Boucher
A Jason Williams redirection of a Bill Bagron shot just 20 seconds later put the PrairieThunder back in the game, down by one, but the Komets’ Kaleigh Schrock tallied his first goal of the playoffs a little over three minutes later, regaining the two-goal lead and effectively ending Bloomington’s chances for a comeback. P.C. Drouin added an empty-netter with 14 second left to establish the final score at 6-3, sending the visitors to the off-season. Nick Boucher made 18 saves, earning his third straight win, while Brad Phillips stopped 29 of 34 shots faced, taking the loss. The schedule for the Semi-finals series between Fort Wayne and Rapid City is set to be announced on Thursday. Contact the writer/photographer at
robert.keith@prohockeynews.comRelated
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