Deep Dive: Monsters claim North Division crown, set sights on Cleveland’s 11th Calder Cup
Apr 24, 2024KINGS IN THE NORTH
Sunday in Toronto marked a monumental day in Monsters franchise history as, on the final day of the 2023-24 regular season, Cleveland’s 3-1 regulation win over the Marlies secured the club its first division title in franchise history, the 2023-24 AHL North Division crown. How rare is this achievement? Despite all their successes spanning decades and all their Calder Cups, the last division title for a Cleveland pro hockey team came a cool 62 years ago when the storied Barons claimed the AHL’s Western Division.
Speaking prior to the Monster’s season-capping win on Sunday, Monsters Head Coach Trent Vogelhuber spoke to the unique achievement of a division title and why Cleveland pulled out all the stops to secure one.
“Ultimately playoffs is all that matters, but it’s a pretty cool achievement because it’s a 72-game achievement,” said Vogelhuber. “You go through tons ups and downs, the roster turnover is immense from the start of the year to now…Going through lulls, peaks, valleys, and you find a way to come together as a group…That’s why we made some of the lineup decisions we did with Jet [Greaves] and some of the other guys, because [the chance to win a division] doesn’t come around often…We’re going to lay all the cards on the table and go for it.”
ACHIEVING CRUISING ALTITUDE
A major part of Sunday’s win, and in fact 75% of Cleveland’s 40 wins this season, was the play of 2024 AHL All-Star Jet Greaves. On Sunday, Greaves did something I don’t think I’ve ever seen done in the American League – he played all three legs of a three-in-three series. That’s three games in less than three days – a Herculean effort for any professional net-minder.
For his trouble, Greaves netted his 30th win of the season, a new single-season franchise record, his 61st victory as a Monster which claimed him the club’s all-time career record for goaltending victories, and AHL Player of the Week honors. The most impressive part of this stretch of selfless sacrifice? The fact that, according to Vogelhuber, Greaves was the one pushing to play in Sunday’s game.
“I think he deserves the opportunity [to set the franchise’s career wins record], I think he deserves the opportunity to be there and give us a shot at the division tonight,” said Vogelhuber pregame on Sunday in Toronto. “Jet’s a guy that’s always said, ‘Players can play three-in-three, I can play too’…We wanted to make sure he had the opportunity for that and he’s been our number-one guy all year. We’re going into a big game and we want him back there.”
AMAZING ATTENDANCE ACHIEVEMENT
The AHL announced this week that 2023-24 established a new all-time league record for combined attendance throughout the season and the league was again led in average attendance this year, for the fourth time in the last five seasons, by the Monsters who attracted 10,263 fans per game this season, the highest average attendance figure league-wide in 25 years.
In the postseason, the Monsters are introducing a new cheering section at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, known as “The Deep End” – read more here about the place to be throughout the Monsters’ 2024 Calder Cup run if you want to play a part in making opposing teams “Fear the Depths”!
WHO WILL THE MONSTERS PLAY?
One perk of a division title? The fact that the Monsters can focus on practice and recovery while the fourth-seeded Belleville Senators and fifth-seeded Toronto battle it out in a three-game play-in series for the right to take on the Monsters in the best-of-five game North Division Semi-Finals.
The B-Sens and Marlies drop the puck on their series later tonight at CAA Arena in Belleville with the Sens 6-3-0-1 vs. Toronto this year and the Marlies 4-3-3-0 vs. Belleville. In a reasonably tight ten-game season series, the Senators (22.0%) and Marlies (21.4%) ended up with similar power-play numbers head-to-head with seven of the teams’ ten meetings featuring one-goal margins of victory.
Who would Cleveland prefer to play? It’s always a perilous exercise to try to determine a preferable playoff opponent based on regular-season numbers as those become patently irrelevant once the puck hits the ice in the postseason, but Cleveland’s had success against both clubs, posting an 8-0-0-0 record against Toronto and a 3-0-1-0 record against Belleville in 2023-24, The Monsters haven’t seen the Sens since December though, while that Marlies are fresh in Cleveland’s minds in the wake of last weekend’s division-clinching wins at Coca-Cola Coliseum.
MONSTERS PLAYOFF MEMORIES…
With this season’s playoff berth just the fourth in club history, we thought we’d travel back in time this week to April of 2011, 13 long years ago, when the then-‘Lake Erie’ Monsters traveled to Winnipeg and back for a first-round series against the Manitoba Moose that ended in heartbreak with a game-seven loss for the Monsters in the club’s first foray into the Calder Cup Playoffs.
Despite strong series’ from forwards Justin Mercier and Ben Walter, who each posted 3-2-5 in seven appearances, Lake Erie couldn’t get past Moose star scorer Marco Rosa’s 4-8-12 line in the series, nor the play in net of then-Moose and future NHL goalie Eddie Lack who went 3-1-0 with a 1.60 goals-against average and .942 save percentage in five appearances against the Monsters. Not to worry though Monsters fans, Manitoba went on to fall in seven games to the Hamilton Bulldogs in the second round.