It appears that Dallas Eakins pushed the right buttons to get Joe Colborne and Nazem Kadri jump started. For the second time in three nights, the Toronto Marlies rallied from a two goal deficit and scored four unanswered tallies to beat the San Antonio Rampage 5-3 Saturday evening, sweeping the three game Texas part of their eight game road swing.
After being sat down following a subpar performance in Houston Thursday night, Colborne scored his first goal of the season on the power play near the end of the second period, while Kadri scored the game winning goal and added two assists.
San Antonio took a 2-0 lead in the first period on goals from Jon Rheault and Jean-Francois Jacques, but the Marlies cut the lead in half midway through the second as Leo Komarov snuck one past Rampage goalie Jacob Markstrom for his fifth on the season and third in his last four games.
Former Marlie Andre Deveaux scored with the man advantage to increase the San Antonio lead to 3-1, but from that point on it was all Toronto. Kadri and Gardiner set up Colborne for an easy tap in on the power play to break his ten game goalless streak at 16:20 of the second period.
Toronto tied it 41 seconds into the third as Colborne fed a nice corner pass to Greg Scott, who one timed a wrist shot past Markstrom for his first of the season. With less than seven minutes in regulation, Kadri gave the Marlies the lead as he used the defenseman as a screen and wristed a shot inside the far post.
Jerry D’Amigo scored his first goal into an empty net to ice the victory.
The Marlies outshot San Antonio 35-23 and goaltender Mark Owuya made 20 saves for his first win of the year.
Toronto completes the western leg of their long road trip Tuesday afternoon in Oklahoma City where they face the talent laden Barons with Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Justin Schultz, before heading east to play the first of back-to-back games against Hamilton at Copps Coliseum on Friday night.
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