Moose beat Admirals, move on to second round

No margin for error? No problem for the Manitoba Moose, who it turns out are quite comfortable being pushed to the brink.

The farm team of the Winnipeg Jets staved off elimination for a second straight game Sunday, skating away with a hard-fought 2-1 victory over the Milwaukee Admirals inside Canada Life Centre that sends them into the second round of the American Hockey League playoffs.

It’s the first Moose playoff series win since the spring of 2018.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” said goaltender Dom DiVincentiis, who played a huge role by stopping 31 of 32 shots.

“We gave them our best and they gave us theirs, but we’re the better team and the better team usually comes out on top.”

It gets late awfully early in a best-of-three series, as Manitoba found out when they dropped Wednesday’s opener 4-1. But they responded to that sudden dose of adversity with back-to-back 2-1 nail-biters against the affiliate of the Nashville Predators.

“After Game 1 there were a lot of guys who had a lot of belief in how we played and that we could come back from this,” said Moose captain Mason Shaw.

“You have a little bit of the jitters, you are a little nervous but we put that all in the right direction and once again got off to a great start. When we are playing our game and hounding on their defence, we are a hard team to contain.”

Manitoba will now face Grand Rapids in a best-of-five series starting next weekend.

Super start

There was no need to play catch-up in this one, the way Manitoba had to do in Game 2 after giving up the first goal of the game. This time, it was the Moose that came out flying with a flurry of scoring chances.

Admirals goaltender Matthew Murray made several outstanding saves but couldn’t stop Walker Duehr, who notched his first of the playoffs at 11:43 of the opening frame. David Gustafsson, who broke a 1-1 tie with 47 seconds left in regulation on Friday night with a perfect tip, played the role of set-up man on this one.

“We were kind of ragging it around a little bit the whole shift,” Duehr said of some sustained offensive zone pressure preceding the goal.

“(Gustafsson) has been a linemate of mine pretty much the whole year. Being back with him is fun, he’s a great player, he’s an easy guy to play with. He does everything right, and if you play the right way and are in the right spots, he’s usually going to find you with the puck.”

The Moose could have — and probably should have — taken an even bigger lead into the intermission as Colby Barlow was robbed by Murray and Samuel Fagemo hit the post.

Persistence eventually paid off as Fagemo made it a 2-0 game late in the second period, ripping a shot from close range after a stellar feed from Gustafsson.

It was a huge goal, giving Manitoba some additional breathing room which would prove extremely valuable.

Dominant defence

Some of Manitoba’s best work in this game — over the final two games, in fact — came in their own end of the rink.

Shot blocks, active sticks and getting in passing lanes was the norm, rather than the exception, and it made life difficult for a Milwaukee team that loves to live in front of the net.

“It was the game plan to get sticks on the inside and make sure they don’t get anything clean. I think the end of the second period and near the end of the game they got some clean, but most of it was chewed up,” said Moose head coach Mark Morrison.

He credited his top four defencemen of Elias Salomonsson, Isaak Phillips, Tyrel Bauer and Ashton Sautner of doing a lot of the dirty work down low.

And, of course, it helps to have a goaltender playing with plenty of confidence to cover up any mistakes that get made.

The only dent in the armour happened with 3:44 left in the third period as the Admirals finished off a nifty three-way passing play to cut Manitoba’s lead in half.

That’s as close as they’d get.

Key play

Samuel Fagemo’s late second-period goal off a slick pass from David Gustafsson gave the Moose a bit of breathing room and proved to be the game-winner.

Three star:

1. Moose G Dom DiVincentiis: 31 saves

2. Moose C David Gustafsson: 2 assists

3. Moose RW Walker Duehr: 1 goal

Extra! Extra!

Manitoba went 2-for-2 on the penalty kill Sunday and a perfect 7-for-7 in the series. The Moose went 0-for-2 on their power play.

“Special teams at this time of year are crucial. Obviously, in the last game we had a huge goal from Gus late in the game to get us that win. And once again tonight when we were called upon it seems like we were getting the job done,” said Shaw.

“We have quick pressure and at the end of the day, your PK is only as good as your goaltending is and I thought Dom did a good job. That is something we are going to lean on moving forward and we hold ourselves to a high standard on the PK so hopefully that continues.”

A crowd of 4,853 took in the matinee and brought the noise, which was noticeable to players and coaches.

“The crowd’s unreal. You know why it’s unreal? Because we don’t usually get those crowds throughout the season,” said Morrison.

“It brings some importance to the game. The thing I liked about it, they’re into the game, they’re not just sitting there. They’re cheering and up and it’s excellent. It was a great crowd.”

The only potential downside to the victory was that Salomonsson was shaken up late in the third period after crashing hard into the boards. The young defenceman just returned on Friday night after missing a couple weeks due to a concussion.

“I haven’t got a medical report yet. I just watched it, he went in awkward. It was right in front of the bench there,” said Morrison. “We’ll get a report later, but he didn’t play after that.”’

Up next

The Moose will now spend the week preparing for Grand Rapids, which finished second-overall in the AHL regular-season standings with a stellar 51-16-5 record. The Griffins earned a bye into the second round by virtue of winning the division.

“It’s going to give us a bit of time to get some banged-up bodies healed as well as prepare for these guys. They’re a good team,” Morrison said of getting six days in between games.

The first two will be held in Winnipeg — Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. — before shifting to Michigan for the duration.

“We know that they’re going to bring their best. I think we can take anybody,” said DiVincentiis.

“If we keep playing like how we just played those last six periods, we’re going to be very good. We love being in that underdog situation and we’re just going to have fun with it.”

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