TORONTO, ON. – The Cleveland Monsters beat the Toronto Marlies 6-5 in a shootout on Sunday evening at Coca-Cola Coliseum. With the win, the Monsters are now 35-22-5-6 and in fourth place in the AHL’s North Division standings.
Cleveland defenseman Ole Julian Bjorgvik-Holm opened the scoring at 13:14 of the first period with Joseph LaBate and Drew Bavaro earning assists to make it 1-0. Toronto added two tallies with Logan Shaw on the power play at 17:25 and Jacob Quillan at 19:00 to send the Monsters into the first break with a 2-1 deficit.
Monsters forward Trey Fix-Wolansky tied the game at two off a feed from Mikael Pyyhtiä at 4:46 of the second frame, but Toronto bounced back ahead at 16:28 with a goal from Cédric Paré to take a 3-2 lead through 40 minutes. The Monsters started the final stanza with a power-play tally at 4:34 from Dylan Gambrell assisted by Rocco
Grimaldi and Hunter McKown to tie the game at three, followed by Grimaldi netting a marker on the man advantage at 6:57 with Madison Bowey and Gavin Brindley on the helpers for the 4-3 Cleveland lead. Toronto tied the game 4-4 with a goal from Joseph Blandisi at 9:58, but Cleveland’s Pyyhtiä scored with Bowey and Fix-Wolansky notching assists at 11:01 to pull ahead 5-4.
Regulation scoring ended with Marlies’ forward Alex Steeves locking the game at five with a power-play goal at 12:59 to force extra time. After a scoreless overtime period, Fix-Wolansky netted the shootout game-winner to take the 6-5 win for Cleveland.
Cleveland’s Pavel Cajan made 25 saves for the win, while Toronto’s Dennis Hildeby stopped 32 shots in defeat.
