By Michael Wax
The Crunch had a winning week, even though they played well enough to win every game. After a 4-2 loss on Fri, Jan. 12, against the Springfield Thunderbirds, the Crunch rallied on Sat, Jan. 13, to win 3-2 in a shootout against the North Division-leading Cleveland Monsters. Finally, they took home a buzzer-beater 5-4 win against the Utica Comets on Mon, Jan. 15.
Syracuse sits at 20-12-2-2, four points behind the Cleveland Monsters for first in the North Division and four points in front of the Belleville Senators for third.
Before we get into what we saw this week, here is some admin:
D Patrick Kudla was signed to a PTO on Wednesday
F Bennett MacArthur was reassigned from Allen (ECHL) to the Crunch by the Lightning
F Daniel Walker was recalled from ECHL Orlando on Tuesday
F Gage Goncalves was named an AHL All-Star on Wednesday. The 22-year-old, third-year pro currently leads the Crunch in assists (23) and points (30). This is Goncalves' first All-Star nod.
Subsequently, Goncalves was called up to the Lightning on Thursday and would make his NHL debut against the Devils. Though he went pointless, he impressed Lightning fans with his tenacity, his playmaking, and his willingness to compete, specifically standing up to the Devils' Nathan Bastian after a headshot on Erik Cernak.
D Max Crozier was called up to the Lightning on Thursday
Goncalves, Myers, and Crozier were assigned to the Crunch on Sunday to get game reps on Monday, with the Lightning off until Thursday
Here are three things we noticed over this week's (+ Monday's) games from the Crunch:
Process Over Results
Sometimes, you play well, and the guy in the other net is an absolute brick wall. The Crunch found out on Friday against the Thunderbirds when they were ready to put together a big offensive performance, but Thunderbirds goaltender Malcolm Subban had other ideas.
Subban was fantastic for the Thunderbirds, stopping 53-of-55 shots from Syracuse to give Seattle the win. The only one that could solve him was Crunch forward Waltteri Merelä, who had a multiple performance on Friday as part of a ginormous weekend. Sometimes, even when you do everything right on the offensive end, all you can do is tip your hat to the goaltender at the other end of the ice for his superhuman performance. Thankfully, that didn't deter the Crunch for the rest of the week, as they were able to pick up two victories.
Merelä
Waltteri Merelä seems to be finding his footing at the AL level, a giant sigh of relief for someone who wasn't necessarily struggling on the main roster but wasn't putting up the points. In this week, he put together a stellar week and was the main reason that Crunch was able to stay in the game on Friday and ultimately win their game on Saturday.
Merelä put together a multi-performance on Friday against the Thunderbirds, the only player that could solve Malcolm Subban during his masterful performance. The first goal came on a wicked wrist shot off the rush, and the tying goal was right in front on a rebound during a power-play.
In the Saturday game against Cleveland, Merelä had a chip-in thanks to some great work from linemate Tristan Allard. He was also to thank for the tying goal, as Mirela, smooth skating, opened up a lane to find defenseman Declan Carlisle, who wired a shot from the left face-off dot to tie the game. Finally, Merelä sent everyone home happy with a fourth-round shootout winner.
It would be great to see Merelä provide some depth scoring for the Lightning in the coming months. But if he needs some more time in Syracuse, it just goes to show you how good he could become.
Chaos in Spades
Monday's matinee game against the Utica comments was one of the craziest games in the NHL this season. Thankfully, the Crunch could come out on top, but there were things in that game that were either mind-blowing, impressive, or head-in-hands insane.
First of all, the Crunch got some major reinforcements for this game, with the Lightning reassigning F Gage Goncalves, D Phil Myers, and D Max Crozier to get them some AHL reps while the Lightning had a four-day break.
The crunch took an early 1-0 lead just 10 seconds into the game with a shot from Phil Myers. After Utica tied the game on the power play, Davante Stevens put the Crunch up 2-1 less than five minutes into the game. This is really when the chaos started.
With the crunch on a 5-on-3 power play thanks to two penalties in 31 seconds between Utica's Justin Dowling and Tyler Wotherspoon, Syracuse head coach Joel Bouchard decided to bafflingly pull gender Matt Tomkins to make it a six-on-three power play. After the comment had killed about 50 seconds of power play time, forward Ryan Schmelzer intercepted the puck from the Syracuse power play and flung it down the ice for a shorthanded goal. It's so ridiculous, you have to see it to believe it.
Thankfully, the Crunch were able to score on a five-on-three less than a minute later, with Mitchell Chaffee getting his 10th goal of the season.
The Comets and Crunch would go back and forth scoring goals before the overtime session, which saw a buzzer-beater from Joe Caroll off a ridiculous pass from Maxine Groshev that Caroll could tuck in right before time expired.
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