PHANTOMS
Lehigh Valley

0-5

MARLIES
Toronto

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Lindblom – Varone – Conner
Carey – Vecchione – Knight
Martel – Vorobyev – Aube-Kubel
Goulbourne – Bardreau – McDonald[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Brennan – Friedman
Sanheim – Myers
Willcox – Lamarche[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:
Lyon
Tokarski

Scratches:

Sam Morin, Will O’Neill, Steven Swavely, Radel Fazleev, Morgan Frost, Carsen Twarynski, Frank Hora, Pascal Laberge, Alex Krushelnyski, David Drake, James de Haas, Carter Hart, Morgan Frost, Isaac Ratcliffe, Anthony Stolarz, John Muse

Injury List:

Game Report

Both games played in Toronto over the weekend were close, one-goal victories for the Marlies in which the Phantoms looked to be keeping pace with the league’s best team this season. Coming home to Allentown for three games provided Lehigh Valley with the perfect opportunity to swing momentum in their favor and get the series back on track.

What happened on Wednesday night was anything but that. After a bad turnover behind the Phantoms net, the Marlies put the puck in the back of Alex Lyon‘s net just 1:01 into the game. And things went downhill from there.

The first period was lackluster, to put it mildly. Neither team seemed to have a whole lot of jump in their skates, and Toronto simply gave the Phantoms no room to skate or to shoot. In fact, Lehigh Valley didn’t get more than seven shots on goal in any period of play on this night.

Lyon, to his credit, kept the Marlies out of the net for the remainder of the period, but the Phantoms couldn’t muster any offense even-strength or on the man advantage. The power play looked downright sloppy and disorganized at times.

Things got worse in the middle frame as Toronto started to light the lamp, sometimes on flukey goals that can really frustrate a team. Those frustrations started to show as the home penalty box was occupied more frequently.

In the third period, those penalties turned into power play goals for the Marlies – especially after Lyon was assessed a match penalty for kicking Mason Marchment. Ben Smith scored twice on the man advantage, with Dustin Tokarski now in the crease for Lehigh Valley. Mikhail Vorobyev then found himself heading to the dressing room early after being handed a ten-minute misconduct for abuse of officials after he didn’t take kindly to being tossed out of the faceoff circle.

All in all, it was a miserable night for the Phantoms and their fans. The two teams reconvene at the PPL Center on Friday night, where Lehigh Valley will face elimination and need to dig deep to find a way to keep their season alive.

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1. Andreas Johnsson  TOR
2. Carl Grundstrom  TOR
3. Garret Sparks  TOR

Post-game interview with Colin McDonald

Interviews conducted by Amy Johnson for AHL Report

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