The Toronto Marlies face the prospect of elimination from the Calder Cup Playoffs as suffered a 2-1 loss to the Texas Stars in Game 5 of the Western Conference Final Saturday afternoon.
Taylor Peters broke a 1-1 tie midway through the third period, cashing in a Drew MacIntyre rebound to give Texas a lead that they would not relinquish and a 3-2 series lead going back to Cedar Park for the final games of the series.
Spencer Abbott scored for Toronto just 41 seconds into the game, but from that point forward the Stars dominated play, outshooting the Marlies 17-5 in the opening 20 minutes and 33-18.
In spite of being heavily outshot and outplayed territorially, the Marlies had a chance to take a two goal lead midway through the middle frame, as Stars team captain Maxime Fortunus and defenseman Jyrki Jokipakka took minor penalties and gave Toronto a 5-on-3 power play for 1:35.
Unlike Game 4 in which they scored three times with the power play, the Blue and White only managed one decent scoring chance during the two-man advantage. Seconds after killing off the penalties, Scott Glennie tied the game.
“That’s the game right there.… Marlies coach Steve Spott said following the game. “You’re up 1-0 and as soon as you don’t get at least momentum off of it, you know they’re probably going to get a push back shift and they got it.…
Similar to his displeasure after their one goal loss in Game 3, Spott was not happy with the performance of his forwards, who lost most of the puck battles to the more energetic and desperate Stars forwards.
“We’ve lost two games on home ice by one goal and both those games we weren’t very good.… Spott said. “Our goaltending’s been fine, our back end’s been fine, we simply don’t have enough pushback from our 12 forwards right now and we need that going into Texas.…
The two clubs face each other once again in Game 6 on Monday at 8pm.
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