Mavs battle back to even series

By Jim den Hollander

Midwesthockey.info

It doesn’t take much imagination to ratchet up some excitement into the East Coast Hockey League Conference semi-final between the Missouri Mavericks and Allen Americans.

First, they have a rivalry dating back at least through the past regular season and this is a match of the league’s top team and regular season champions — Mavericks and the defending Presidents Cup Champion — Americans.

Americans 2 at Mavericks 0

The Best of Seven series kicked off on Friday (April 29) at the Silverstein Eye Centers Arena at Independence, MO; just outside of KC. The Americans stole home ice advantage away with a 2-0 shutout win in the opener as Gill Riley turned aside all 34 Maverick chances to nail down the shutout. 

Big games are nothing new to the veteran from Northfield, MN who backstopped the Americans to the title in its first year in the ECHL last season and he picked up his fifth win of the post season while Greger Hanson, 28, from Sweden notched the goal that would stand up as the game winner just 70 seconds into the contest. The goal was the fourth of the post season for Hanson

That 1-0 lead held up all of the way through the first two periods and a powerplay goal by 27-year-old Casey Pierro-Zabotel added a little insurance with his third of the playoffs, early in the final frame.

The win was the first of the playoffs for the Mavericks and the first blemish on the record of goaltender Josh Robinson, 26, from Frankenmuth, MI who turned aside 25 shots.

Americans 2 at Mavericks 5

The Allen crew looked to grab a stranglehold on the series and scored a pair again the following night at Independence. However, that wasn’t even close to enough in that one as the Mavs evened the series with a 5-2 win.

Both of the goals for the Americans came in the game’s final five minutes, cutting into a 5-0 Mavericks lead to spoil the shutout bid, but little else in a game that was actually closer on the shot clock — the Mavs holding a narrow 23-20 margin.

Parker Milner, 25 from Pennsylvania picked up his second win of the post season with a 21-save effort in goal for the Mavs. He faced only nine shots through the first period and handled all of them, but the Americans threw all it had at the home team down the stretch, outshooting the Mavs 14-2 in the final period.

Meanwhile at the opposite end, Riley was not quite as sharp, beaten four times on 17 shots through the first two periods before Joel Rumpel, 25, from Saskatchewan saw his first action of the post season in the third, stopping two of three shots by the Mavericks.

Defenseman, C.J. Ludwig, 25, from Rhinelander, WI opened the scoring for the home team just 88 seconds into the contest with other first period goals coming from Tyler Barnes, a 26-year-old forward from Burnsville, MN and Darren Nowick, a 23-year-old forward from California.

Forward Rocco Carzo, 25, from Pennsylvania scored the lone middle period goal to stretch the Maverick lead and Barnes added his second of the night and fourth of the post season on a powerplay near the six-minute mark of the third to all but settle the game.

Pierro-Zabotel finally got the Americans on the board just 4:56 from the final buzzer and Chad Costello, 20, from Johnston, IA added another on a powerplay 93 seconds later.

The series will shift to the Allen Event Center for the next two — Wednesday and Friday — both with 7:05 p.m. CDT faceoffs.