NORTH CHARLESTON, SC – By this point, the effort expended by the South Carolina Stingrays just to make the 2021 ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs has been well documented: having to win six consecutive games to finish the regular season as the number four seed in the Eastern conference with a road that included the number one seeded Florida Everblades and if things held to form the number two seeded Greenville Swamp Rabbits.
Monday night at the Carolina Ice Palace, the Stingrays had a chance to once again earn the crown as the best team in the east and when the final buzzer sounded, the E.A. “Bud” Gingher trophy and the conference title headed back to the Low country for the first time since 2017.
Max Novak’s goal four minutes into the third period proved to be the game-winner as the Stingrays got past Greenville by a final of 2-1 in front of a space-restricted crowd of 550, taking the best-of-five series three wins to one. Matthew Weis had the other goal for South Carolina in support of goalie Hunter Shepard who played one of his best games of the postseason, stopping 29 of 30 Swamp Rabbits shots to earn the victory. The Stingrays will host games 1 and 2 of the championship series against the winner of the Western conference championship series between Allen and Fort Wayne on Friday, June 25th and Sunday, June 27th before the best-of-five series heads west for the concluding games.
It was expected that Greenville would come out hard in the first period. The Swamp Rabbits put lots of pressure on the South Carolina defense and Shepard early, testing the Stingrays netminder with four shots before the home team could muster its first shot of the night 9:13 in. Much like Saturday’s opening frame, Shepard and Swamp Rabbits goalie John Lethemon (Monday’s starter replacing Ryan Bednard) were perfect as each turned away eight shots to send the contest to the first intermission in a 0-0 deadlock.
Shepard found himself in a key spot just 2:26 into the second period when teammate Tyler Nanne hooked Greenville’s Max Zimmer on a breakaway. Zimmer was awarded a penalty shot but Shepard fended off Zimmer’s try with his glove hand to keep the game scoreless.
The next pivotal moment came at the 8:15 mark when Swamp Rabbits forward Garrett Thompson nailed Stingrays captain Andrew Cherniwchan with an after-the-whistle hit, sending Cherniwchan to the locker room for a spell and South Carolina to a five-minute major power play. The home team cashed in when Caleb Herbert won an offensive zone faceoff to Max Gottlieb. Gottlieb sent the puck to Weis at the point. Weis found a shooting lane and released a drive that caught the inside of the right post and caromed into the net for Weis’ fourth playoff goal and a lead that the Stingrays would never give up.
With a goal finally on the board, the intensity of the game ramped up and so did the physicality. A scrum at the 14:28 mark led to three penalties, two of them on the Swamp Rabbits, that gave South Carolina another man advantage that the Stingrays did not capitalize on. One final too many men on the ice against Greenville also went by the boards, leaving the Stingrays clinging to a 1-0 lead heading to the final period.
Early in the final frame, South Carolina found what at the time was an insurance tally. The Stingrays drove into the Greenville end of the ice with Cole Ully carrying the puck on the right wing. Once in the zone, he dropped the puck into the middle where Weis was steaming ahead. Weis attracted two defenders in his direction and as they started to converge, Weis slipped a feed to Novak on the other wing. The pass was perfect and from an angle, Novak ripped a one-time shot that beat Lethemon for Novak’s third playoff tally of 2021.
Novak’s score became a very important one as 35 seconds later, the Swamp Rabbits finally found a way to penetrate Shepard’s brick wall. Joey Haddad won an offensive zone faceoff back to defenseman Ben Finkelstein who threaded the needle over the goalie’s shoulder for his first playoff score, cutting the deficit to 2-1.
Greenville wanted badly to wrestle the momentum away from South Carolina but try as they might, the Swamp Rabbits could not accomplish it. The Stingrays were able to match Greenville shot for shot over the final 15 minutes (albeit with help from a final power play that put the Swamp Rabbits on a defensive mode for two minutes). The visitors mustered only four shots over the final minutes, including just two in the last four minutes of regulation, all of which Shepard handled with ease.
Both western teams expressed wishes to host the final three games of the best-of-five title series, allowing South Carolina to announce that it will host the first two games, just as it did in the two conference series. The Stingrays will carry a franchise mark of 3-2 into the final, having won the Kelly Cup in 1997 (over the Louisiana Ice Gators), 2001 (Trenton Titans) and 2009 (Alaska Aces) while falling to Allen in 2015 and Colorado in 2017.
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