The Toronto Marlies frustrated the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins and found a way to slip out of Game 1 with a road win. Despite Rutger McGroarty tying the game at 2-2 in the third period, Toronto found a late goal from veteran Michael Pezzetta with 1:36 to play and tacked on an even later empty net goal to take a 4-2 victory.
Wilkes held a 36-16 advantage in shots but coach Kirk MacDonald felt that was misleading and the Pens got out-executed.
Here were the lines for the night. Defenseman Owen Pickering missed a second-straight game with an undisclosed injury.
Where Tristan Broz has gone, the goals have followed this postseason. Broz had the primary assist on McGroarty’s goal, though most of it was an individual effort by the goal scorer by stick with the play and finally beat goalie Artur Akhtyamov.
Veteran defenseman Alex Alexeyev opened the scoring with a routine looking shot from the blueline that snuck through the traffic in the first period. Rookies Mikhail Ilyin and Harrison Brunicke picked up assists without doing anything but making normal in-zone passes.
In the end, it was enough. The WBS power play was 0/3 on the night, the Marlies were 1/2. That, plus the late third period goal tipped the balance of Game 1 in Toronto’s direction.
The Penguins vowed to regroup and execute better in Game 2 coming up on Friday night. The silver lining for WBS is this round is a best-of-seven, up from the best-of-five that they have been paying. Dropping Game 1 at home is never ideal, but at least it isn’t as harmful in a seven game series compared to a shorter one. WBS will get that chance to regroup and give it a go to see how they respond. So far this team has been impressive at shrugging off losses and coming back strong – WBS has a 3-0 record this playoffs in the game following a loss (winning by a combined 14-5 score in those games). Wilkes will need to go back to that well again in order to even up the series before it heads to Toronto for Games 3+4.