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Cutthroats slap Sundogs in the face |
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On a cold winter’s night in Colorado, the Denver Cutthroats warmed up their hometown fans with a dominant win against the Arizona Sundogs.
A.J. Gale two goals and a Gordie Howe hat trick and Colorado Avalanche goalie prospect Kieren Millan turned aside 22 shots for his first ever professional shutout, the first in Cutthroats history.
“It’s always nice getting a shutout in the first place but being the first in the franchise history is obviously a little bit extra ’cause your name is going to be going down in history for a while,” said Millan. “Hopefully in twenty years people can look back and say they watched the game and saw me in the first shutout.”
Denver took an early lead when Brad Smyth jumped oiff the bench into a breakout pass from Troy Schwab and rifled it past Sundogs goaltender Adam Russo to give the Cutthroats a 1-0 lead.
It looked like the Sundogs had tied it a minute later off the stick of Jake Hauswith but the play was blown dead because Mikel Bedard knocked the puck down with a high stick.
Gale made it 2-0 minutes later with a fabulous power move into the offensive zone, putting a one-handed backhander over Russo’s shoulder while holding off Arizona defenseman Kyle Schussler with his other hand.
Gale continued his torrid points pace to start the season with his eighth and ninth goals, giving him 19 points overall on the season.
Seconds later, the Fish went on the powerplay with Sundogs forward Adam Smyth in the box for serving a double minor for playing whack-a-mole with a few Cutthroats players with Don Maloney Jr. serving one of the minors.
The Fish would capitalize, roasting the Sundogs coming back lazy on a puck they though would be icing. Luke Fulghum hustled and beat everyone to the puck, dished it to Troy Schwab who threw it to the slot for a waiting Gale for a perfect one-time-goal, capping off a dominant period in which the Cutthroats outshot the Dogs 16-6.
“It looked like Brad Smyth got a piece of it and the ref, rightfully so, waived (the icing) off,” Fulghum said.
Learning from past failures, the Cutthroats kept the pedal to the metal in the second period. Gabe Gautier took a feed from Brad Lutes to put the Fish up 4-0 before the second period was even a two minutes old.
“We keep getting better. Tonight our team just stuck to our systems,” said Gale. “Our breakouts were great, neutral zone was good, we’re getting pucks deep – those are little things that we’ve got to continue to work on to be successful.”
Millan, fresh out college hockey, came up huge for the Fish in the second period, staying square to the shots and making a few spectacular saves, notably among them, a huge padstack game eight minutes into the period, a doorstop save on Jeff Kryzakos all alone in front of the net and a brilliant set of back-to-back saves on Adam Smyth at point blank range.
“Being in a different level, different step, different part of my life, it’s obviously nice to get the ball rolling and hopefully we can continue this momentum and play well this weekend,” Millan said.
The Cutthroats pushed the lead to 5-0 off a fluttering shot by Fulghum that deflected off Russo’s glove and dropped into the net. From then on, it removed any sort of urgency to the game and inducing the Cutthroats faithful to give Russo a Bronx cheer for every save he made to the end of the game.
Smyth tipped a Gale pass by Russo to complete the blowout 6-0, creating a chippy environment to the end of the game as Arizona’s frustration boiled over. Even with the chippy atmosphere, the Cutthroats never lost their composure and turned in their most complete effort to date.
“I liked the way we competed as a team. In the third period we stuck together,” said Armstrong. “They had a closed door meeting after the second period today, which was good. Even though we had the lead, they’re starting to hold each other accountable, which is more important than me holding them accountable. It’s about them holding each other accountable and I think that was the idea tonight.”
Colorado Avalanche Blogger • 
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