Crunch drop opening game of series to St. John’s

By Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
April 21, 2017

The top seeded Syracuse Crunch, which captured the North Division title, opted to start their opening round playoff series on the road against the St. John’s IceCaps.

With the long travel involved to get to Newfoundland, in the Atlantic region of Canada, Crunch management chose to get the travel out of the way and play the last three potential games at War Memorial. But Syracuse better find their road game quickly to ensure those home games count.

St. John’s took Game 1 of the best-of-five series on Friday, knocking off Syracuse 2-1 at MIle One Centre. Game 2 will take place on Saturday before the series shifts to Syracuse on Wednesday for Game 3.

Mike McKenna finished with 19 saves while Tye McGinn scored a third-period power play goal but Syracuse was unable to complete the comeback from down two goals to the No. 4 seed in the division.

“It’s a hard-fought, close game and we know that’s what we are going to have all through the playoffs,” McKenna said. “We weren’t on the right side of it tonight.”

The IceCaps grabbed the lead late in the first period with a power play goal as Nikita Scherbak came down the slot to one-time a pass from behind the net from Charles Hudon at 16:05 of the opening period. Counting the regular season, it’s the 14th power play goal St. John’s has scored against Syracuse in nine meetings this season. Chris Terry provided a 2-0 lead for the IceCaps, finishing off a backdoor play from Hudon at the 2:59 mark of the second period.

“I thought we had a very nervous start,” Syracuse coach Ben Groulx said. “We didn’t have our skates at the beginning and we made bad mistakes. I thought they were very opportunistic to score those two goals to take the lead. But that’s part of the game when you are making mistakes in your own zone and they have their best players out there, you are looking for trouble and they end up scoring both goals.”

The Crunch started to find their game better as the game moved on, gaining momentum from killing off a four-minute power play when Jake Dotchin was called for double minor for high sticking at 7:29 of the second period.

But it wasn’t until McGinn zipped a pass from Matthew Peca past goaltender Charlie LIndgren at 10:21 while on the power play that Syracuse was able to get on the board and cut the deficit to one goal. Lightning first-round pick in 2016, Brett Howden, registered an assist on the play for his first career playoff point while extending his scoring streak to five points.

Despite a late push, however, with some good looks late in the game, including a point blank chance from Byron Froese in the final minute, the Crunch were not able to find the tying goal.

“I thought we got better as the game went on, but it still wasn’t our best game,” Groulx said. “Credit to St. John’s, they blocked a lot of shots and their goaltender was hot and their top players made the difference. For us it’s about regrouping and coming back and playing better (Saturday).”

The series resumes on Saturday at 6 p.m. EDT

“We just have to stick to our game plan,” McKenna said. “All those cliche answers are really true, we have to come out and rid this evening from our mind, remember what we did well and emphasize that because we did do a lot of things well. If you keep getting enough chances, keep out-shooting and potentially out-chancing them, if we keep doing that, hopefully we end up on the right side of the ledger.”