Moose marksmen muffled

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This article was published 07/06/2009 (6275 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HERSHEY, Pa. — They don’t have to be chocolate-covered; the Manitoba Moose will take any kind of goal they can get at this stage of the Calder Cup final.

Shut out for only the second time all season — that’s 99 games and counting — the Moose bowed 3-0 to the Hershey Bears at Giant Center Saturday night to fall behind 2-1 in the best-of-seven AHL championship series.

Game 4 is this afternoon at 5 p.m. (CJOB, MTS-TV Ch. 50, Shaw Ch. 9).

Game 3 was decided by special teams, and in something of a surprise in form, the Bears maligned penalty-kill put a blank on the Moose.

Hershey was dead-last during the regular season in that department, operating at only 78.6 per cent, and ranked 12th of 16 playoff teams coming into the final, not an inspiring set of numbers.

Until Saturday when the Moose went zero for five, including a 50-second five-on-three early in the second period.

"Killing that off was huge for us," said Bears coach Bob Woods. "If they score there, they’ve still got another power play and can go ahead. You can go from being up a goal to being tied or possibly one down. In a game, there are always different momentum changes and that could have gone the other way."

Moose power-play quarterback Nolan Baumgartner lamented the fact his team didn’t shoot more during its man advantages.

"We had chances," Baumgartner said. "We generated them in the second anyway, and they had two power-play goals and we had none and that’s the game right there."

Hershey scored on its first opportunity of the game, getting a Graham Mink deflection. Alexandre Giroux, with his 14th of the playoffs, added another midway through the second and the sell-out of 10,696 were loving a third home playoff shutout in five games.

Hershey has given up just one goal in the last seven home periods.

"It wasn’t easy, I can tell you that," Woods said. "They threw a lot at us — give our penalty-killings credit. You talk about it all the time, that your best penalty-killer is your goaltender and Neuvy (Michal Neuvirth) did that tonight.

"He’s dialed in and to shut out a team like Manitoba, you’re doing a lot of good things. He’s playing with a lot of confidence and hopefully he can roll that into tomorrow."

Neuvirth, full marks for all the big saves, stopped 28 Manitoba shots to blank the Moose for the first time since Dec. 7.

"I think we had our chances and didn’t shoot where we wanted," Moose winger Guillaume Desbiens said. "We’ve got to go high on him. We made him look good. Most of the shots were on him and we couldn’t bury our chances.

"We’ll give him credit, too. He made some big saves. We only needed one goal, one bounce tonight and we didn’t get it, so we’ll have to work harder at it tomorrow."

The normal adjustments will be scrambled together today and Desbiens said Moose penalty-killers, more than the power-play units, will have to step it up.

"I don’t think there’s anything wrong (with the power play)," he said. "Some nights the puck doesn’t want to go in and it was one of those nights.

"I’m sure there are going to be some adjustments. Even when it goes well we try to make it better. I think we’ll have to work more on our PK because we gave up those goals."

Moose coach Scott Arniel had to think a moment to say what he didn’t like about his power play Saturday.

"Burying them would probably the best thing," Arniel said. "If they’re going to score on their power plays, we’ve got to make darn sure when we get that opportunity we’ve got to take advantage of it and take the crowd out of it.

"We’ll tinker and next time we get one (a five-on-three), we’ll hope to be a bit sharper."

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

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