MANCHESTER, NH – On Friday night, the Manchester Monarchs will begin their longest home stand of the early season. The seven game home stand will open up with a weekend series with the Toledo Walleye followed by a visit by the Elmira Jackals and end with the Norfolk Admirals coming in the following weekend.
The Walleye this season are off to a 4-4-1 start to the season, good for second place in the North Division. The Monarchs are also off to a 4-4 start but are currently fourth in the East division. The Walleye pose an extremely tough test for the Monarchs both offensively and defensively.
The Monarchs will have to find an answer for Jeff Lerg who is currently ranked as the second best goalie in the ECHL. Lerg currently has a 1.36 goals against average and a .944 save percentage to go with a 3-0-1 record on the season for the Walleye.
Offensively, Matt White looks to remain hot after scoring a hat trick in a four point effort that led to a win on Tuesday for the Monarchs. The Monarchs will also have to stop Toledo’s leading scorer Shane Berschbach who has three goals and three assists through nine games this season.
Once the series with Manchester wraps up, the Elmira Jackals will come to town for a Wednesday morning matchup. The Jackals are 5-5 so far this season, just one spot ahead of the Monarchs in the division.
The Monarchs will need to stop the Jackals’ red hot rookie and team scoring leader Cason Hohmann. Hohmann has four goals and seven assists this season to lead his team with 11 points. The Monarchs will need to tighten up both their defensive zone and the penalty kill as both areas have been issues for them in the first few games.
Manchester will then take on the Norfolk Admirals in a weekend series to end their home stand.
The Admirals this season are 4-6 and sit right behind the Monarchs in last place in the east. Despite the Admirals slow start, Josh Currie has led their team in scoring with five goal and five assists. They will also look for better performances out of starting goalie Ty Rimmer, who is 4-5 on the season but has struggled of late.
The three teams pose very tough challenges for Manchester, which knows that it will need to get by those teams in order to get back in the playoff race. These games will also be critical from a psychological point because these are same teams that the Monarchs will be facing off against late in the schedule. It will also be interesting to see how the goaltending work is split up between the two weekend series and the midweek contest.
This home stand will be a tough test for the Monarchs but they could make up some serious ground in both the division and the conference races. These next 14 days could be looked at as a critical point in Manchester’s early season progress.
Follow us on Twitter @prohockeynews
You must be logged in to post a comment.