Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
After consecutive home losses put them down 0-2 in the series, the Cleveland Monsters made their stand at Place Bell on Sunday afternoon.
But nothing for this team has ever come easily. Their head coach Trent Vogelhuber, a seventh-round draft pick, battled his way through parts of seven pro seasons – including a Calder Cup championship with the Monsters in 2016 – before moving into the coaching profession at age 30. If it’s true that a team takes on the personality of its head coach, then Cleveland has certainly done so with its third-year leader.
So tonight’s Game 4 in this best-of-five series against the AHL’s regular-season champion is just another night of circumstances to handle for Cleveland. They can handle elimination hockey, and if they do it successfully again tonight, they’d get another chance to play for their season in what would be Game 5 Friday in Laval. The difference then, of course, would be that the Monsters would have brought the Rocket to the brink right alongside them.
But a Game 5 is long off for the Monsters. A core tenet for Vogelhuber is breaking the game into easily digestible pieces for his players. Not one game. Not one period. Not even a 10-minute stretch. Take everything shift-by-shift. If that shift goes poorly, if the opponent scores, immediately shake it off. And if there is success, like a goal, then take that and leave it behind as well.
Of course, shaking that natural inclination to ruminate about a past mistake, to fret about where a series stands, or to let up after success is far more easily said than done. The Monsters certainly have had their share of stumbles and have had to work to make Vogelhuber’s philosophies something that they can incorporate more and more consistently.
Enough of this team remains from last year’s Monsters club that repeatedly showed that it could play comfortably under pressure – and even when facing playoff elimination. In the division semifinals against Belleville, the Monsters lost Game 1 and needed overtime victories in Games 2 and 3 to gain control of that series before putting it away. They ran into even more serious trouble against Hershey in the Eastern Conference Finals, falling into an 0-3 hole before coming all the way back to overtime of Game 7 before the Bears finally put them away for good.
After a shortened summer in which they had to deal with several player departures, the Monsters fought their way through this season. It took them until their second-to-last game of the regular season to secure a playoff berth – by virtue of a Belleville loss on a night when the Monsters also went down in defeat.
And so here they are. Two losses in Cleveland, scoring just two goals. But they put three pucks past Cayden Primeau, one of the AHL’s top goaltenders, in Game 3, and that should give any offense confidence.
Sunday’s win wasn’t without its share of more adversity. Star defenseman Denton Mateychuk, a 2022 first-round pick who dominated as a rookie for the first two months of the regular season before earning a promotion to the Columbus Blue Jackets, did not finish the afternoon. Down to five defensemen and nursing a lead, the Monsters were outshot 19-4 in the third period. But Jet Greaves totaled 36 saves, and the third line of rookie Luca Pinelli, Dylan Gambrell and Roman Ahcan had a dominant game. Gambrell broke out for his first two playoff goals while Ahcan had a goal to go with two assists. Pinelli had two assists, including setting up an insurance goal with 8:11 to play in regulation.
Always frank, Vogelhuber had expressed his unhappiness following Game 2. After Game 3, he made his pride quite clear, however.
“I think the message before the game was there’s a choice to be made on how you want this game to go,” Vogelhuber said after the win. “But if you lay it on the line, and the universe has other plans, you live with it. But I like our chances when our group really lays it on the line.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
