Deep Dive: Monsters wrap regular season with critical road test
Apr 17, 2024BACK ON THE BUS
In the wake of a two-game split with the Laval Rocket to cap the club’s regular-season home slate, the Cleveland Monsters embark on a critical season-ending three-in-three road trip through the heart of the North Division, laden with postseason implications. Having secured a berth in the Calder Cup Playoffs for the fourth time in franchise history (2011, 2016, 2019), Friday’s game in Rochester and the weekend tilts to follow in Toronto separate a potential division title (it would be the first in club history) from a first-round bye, or a stern test in the three-game ‘play-in’ round as the division’s fourth or fifth seed. A common obstacle throughout the season for AHL teams, the Monsters have mostly avoided the dreaded “three-in-three” this season, going 2-0-0-1 in Grand Rapids and Chicago in mid-February in the only other scheduling stretch of its kind for Cleveland.
Through seven of eight games in the two teams’ season series, the Monsters are 3-3-1-0 versus the Rochester Americans and 1-2-0-0 at Blue Cross Arena with a -5 goal differential (23/28). Cleveland D Jake Christiansen (5 GP, 2-5-7) and RW Trey Fix-Wolansky (5 GP, 4-2-6) are scoring at a better than point per game pace against the ‘Amerks’ this season while Rochester C Brandon Biro leads the head-to-head scoring race for Rochester (7 GP, 4-4-8). A key factor in the season series is Rochester’s power-play, which has converted at an impressive 32% clip versus Cleveland this year.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Monsters invade Coca-Cola Coliseum for a pair of afternoon clashes with the Toronto Marlies. Through six head-to-head battles this season, the Monsters are a perfect 6-0, although five of the six meetings between the clubs have been one-goal affairs. Toronto has shut down Cleveland’s power-play this year, with the Monsters converting only once on 24 attempts (4.2%), but Cleveland’s goaltending has stifled the Marlies with G Jet Greaves posting a 5-0-0 record with a .915 save percentage against Toronto and G Pavel Cajan stopping 41 of 42 pucks in his lone head-to-head appearance.
How important are these final regular-season games for the Monsters? With 82 points, Cleveland is currently two points back of first-place Syracuse, one point behind second-place Rochester, and only two points clear of fourth-place Toronto with each team having three games left to play. The Monsters want to finish strong to secure one of the top two seeds in the Division, and with it, home ice in the Division Semi-Finals. Rochester, however, has the same goal and Toronto is battling to ascend to at least third place to secure a first-round bye. Suffice it to say, the playoffs have already begun in the North Division.
THE CAVALRY HAS ARRIVED
In the weeks following the NHL trade deadline in early March, injuries and illnesses ravaged the Columbus Blue Jackets’ roster, necessitating the emergency recall of many of the Monsters’ key players. Without captain Brendan Gaunce, forwards Fix-Wolansky, James Malatesta, Carson Meyer, Mikael Pyyhtia, defensemen Nick Blankenburg, Christiansen, and David Jiricek, and goaltenders Greaves and Malcolm Subban, the Monsters suffered through their longest winless stretch of the season (0-5-2-0 spanning 7 games from March 18th-April 6th).
Shorthanded to the extreme, the Monsters persevered through a personnel challenge familiar to any AHL club and on Tuesday night received the assignments from Columbus of Blankenburg, Jiricek, C Luca Del Bel Belluz, Malatesta, Pyyhtia, and Greaves, with those moves following the recent loans of Fix-Wolansky, Subban, and Christiansen to Cleveland. While Gaunce and Meyer deal with lingering injuries sustained at the NHL level, even more reinforcements are presumably Cleveland-bound should the Monsters advance in postseason play.
Remarkably, Tuesday’s six player assignments account for 19% of Cleveland’s point production this season and 73% of the club’s goaltending wins. When you include the April 15th loan of Fix-Wolansky and Christiansen’s loan on April 1st, post-deadline assignments account for 34% of Cleveland’s goals and 36% of the Monsters’ points this season!
IT’S BEEN AWHILE…
Five years removed from Cleveland’s last Calder Cup Playoff berth, earned following the 2018-19 AHL season, the Monsters will attempt to advance beyond the second round of postseason play for the second time in club history. In 2016, the Monsters went 14-2 en route to Cleveland’s 10th Calder Cup title and the franchise’s first, and in 2019, the Monsters defeated Syracuse in four games in the North Division Semi-Finals, but were swept by Toronto in the following round.