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It’s over:
Tornado eliminated 5-1
04/11/2008
by John Tranchina
With their backs against the
wall, the Texas Tornado came out playing inspired hockey, but in the
end, they fell short and were eliminated from the NAHL playoffs.
After taking a 1-0 lead into the
second period, the Tornado were done in by their Achilles’ heel all
season, surrendering four power play goals en route to a 5-1 loss to
the Topeka Roadrunners Friday night at the DejaBlue Arena in the
Frisco Dr Pepper StarCenter.
The loss means the Roadrunners
complete the sweep and prevail in the best-of-five first-round
series three games to none and advance to the next stage while the
Tornado’s season is over.
Trailing 2-0 in the series after
dropping the first two games last weekend in Topeka by a combined
score of 13-2 to the South Division champions, Texas looked to be in
good shape early and seemed to be on their way to extending the
series. But the Tornado couldn’t stay out of the penalty box and
ultimately succumbed to a superior opponent with a good chance to
advancing deep in the post-season.
“I think that tonight tells the
tale of the whole series,” Tornado coach Dwight Mullins said after
his team was outscored 10-0 in the three contests’ second periods.
“We just could not seem to get out of the second period with a
chance to win the hockey game in the third. Loose pucks, give up
bad pucks, take a penalty and you can’t put them on the power play
and it was kind of the same tale there. We did have opportunities
and for the most part in the first part of the game, our power play
was doing well and then we ran into problems. It’s been our nemesis
pretty much all year.”
Sean Roadhouse scored the
Tornado’s only goal in his final appearance in junior hockey, as
Texas once again had difficulty solving Topeka star goaltender Bryce
Merriam, who made 17 saves and was named the game’s first star.
The Tornado had a surprise
starter in their own crease, 16-year-old Adam Brown, who was solid
in his NAHL debut, stopping 28 shots. Added to the roster from the
Dallas Stars Midget AAA squad that lost in the USA Hockey Tier 1
national quarterfinals last weekend, Brown was inserted into the
lineup in an effort to spark the Tornado and performed well under
difficult circumstances.
“I thought Adam really was
solid, with the exception of maybe the last four or five minutes,”
Mullins said. “I thought, for a ‘91 to come in with this kind of
pressure, I really thought he gave us a chance to win early. I
really thought he had a good presence, I really liked where the game
was heading, and can’t really say anything too much about the goals,
other than maybe that last one.”
After an outstanding first
period, the Tornado took a 1-0 lead into the second, but things
began to unravel on them as they again spent some time in the
penalty box and Topeka punished them for it, outshooting Texas 17-2
in the period and emerging from it with a 3-1 edge.
Led by a goal and two assists
from defenseman Aaron Gens, and two assists each from Jordan George
and Josh Kamrass, the Roadrunner power play was lethal. Overall on
the night, Topeka went 4-for-9 on the power play, a level of success
that coach Scott Langer indicated did not come as easily as it
looked.
“We have some guys that do some
different things,” said Langer of the PP unit that was a stellar
8-for-21 in the series overall. “We have good vision, Josh Kamrass
does a good job, and once we got the puck to Gens tonight, which
Texas has denied us all series, it all clicked. The coaching staff
over there has done a real good job countering our power play, we
had to make changes almost every period of this series.”
The Roadrunners started taking
back the game just 2:08 into the second, on Eriah Hayes’ third goal
of the series, on a man advantage. George controlled the puck
behind the net and fed a quick pass out front to Hayes at the lip of
the crease, and Hayes banged a quick one-timer past Brown for the
1-1 tie.
“As soon as Hayes scored that
first goal, you could feel it on the bench, there was a switch of
momentum in our favor,” Langer said. “We weren’t used to, in the
second half of the season, to playing from behind, and once we got
to score, we kind of settled in.”
Later in the period, with Topeka
on another power play, Gens blasted a devastating one-timer from
just inside the blue line that zipped past a screened Brown to make
it 2-1 at the 9:48 mark.
Just 25 seconds later, Brown
came up with a big stop on John Stoddard’s wrist shot from the slot
to keep it a one-goal game.
Brown then denied Bryon Paulazzo
from the right side of the crease and then George’s point-blank
rebound chance on a power play with 2:32 left in the period.
Then, 21 seconds after another
power play expired, Topeka continued to control the puck in the
Texas zone and picked up another goal. After Gens’ slapper from the
point was deflected, the puck rolled into the slot and Reed Seckel
swatted the loose rebound under the outstretched arms of a lunging
Brown to give the Roadrunners a 3-1 lead with 1:13 remaining.
“I absolutely have no answer.
If I had the answer, I would have fixed it a long time ago,” Mullins
said of the Tornado’s second-period woes in the series. “We’ve
tried standing up and spinning to the left and sitting three seats
to the right and everything else. I think we were okay until we
started to take bad penalties. I have to question a couple a little
bit, but you can’t do that with them and they’re going to hurt you
and that’s kind of the tale of the game.”
Going into the final period down
by two, the Tornado tried to apply the offensive pressure, but
seemed out of sync and were unable to generate any prime scoring
chances. Their best opportunity came about 8:20 into the third,
when Andrew Blazek and Rob Cifelli had back-to-back shots in close
as they tried to jam a loose puck past Merriam during a mad scramble
in front.
The Roadrunners then salted the
game - and the series - away with two more goals in a 42-second span
late in the period.
First, on another power play,
George fed a pass from beside the right goalpost out to Corey
Jendras in the high slot, and the resulting one-timer ended up
behind Brown with 5:45 to go.
Then, with 5:02 left and Topeka
on yet another man-advantage, Tom Kleidon’s slap shot from the point
found its way under Brown and in to account for the final score.
Things went about as good as
could be hoped for in the first period, as Texas killed off two
Topeka power plays, and had three of their own, capitalizing on a
5-on-3 advantage to take an early lead.
Sergei Korostin had an
outstanding opportunity to snap the scoreless tie while on a power
play with 7:15 remaining in the period, as he sped into the Topeka
zone on the rush and unleashed a wicked wrist shot from the right
face-off circle. It was ticketed for the upper right corner, but
Merriam got just enough of his arm on it to deflect it up over the
net.
It took the Tornado just 22
seconds into a 1:14 5-on-3 advantage to jump out to the 1-0 lead, as
Roadhouse connected with 1:35 remaining in the first period. Sam
Goodwin carried the puck behind the Topeka net and in a sneaky
exchange, handed the puck off to Roadhouse coming the opposite
direction, so while Merriam looked one way expecting Goodwin to come
around the other side, Roadhouse quickly executed the wrap-around
and deposited the puck inside the left post.
Still with a one-man advantage,
the Tornado almost got a second one as Tyler Bowman raced into the
Roadrunners’ zone and fired a quick wrister from the left circle,
but Merriam made a huge glove stop with just 14.6 seconds left.
At that point, things looked
good for Texas, but alas, it was not to be.
“They came out real strong, they
made some real good adjustments on their forecheck and we struggled
early and they had a lot of intensity,” Topeka coach Langer said of
the Tornado in the first period. “If they would have gotten a
couple of those in the back of the net, we would have been in
trouble. We weathered the storm there in the first period and in
the second period, our power play made the difference.”
With the season ending on home
ice, Tornado veterans such as Roadhouse and Ryan Fuller, to name
just two, played their final games in a Texas jersey, with Roadhouse
lingering for a while after the final handshake and finally skating
off the ice in tears.
“Sean Roadhouse and Ryan Fuller,
they poured their heart and soul into this organization,” Mullins
said. “They’ve seen the very, very good times here and they’ve
probably seen some of the worst times here. To their credit, they
were committed to our organization and committed to our hockey
team. I would have liked to have hopefully helped them have a
little bit better ending, but at the same time, they played with
everything that they had and that’s the kind of emotion that has
really made them an integral part of the organization. But for
those guys, it’s on to a new chapter and that’s a tough step in
life.”
So that’s it for the 2007-08
season. What’s next?
“I think the biggest thing here
is to try to get with everybody and we will continue to try to help
some kids with college and try to pursue some things beyond this a
little bit,” coach Mullins said. “At the same time, we will start
to address our attention to May and to training camps and starting
to focus on some key players and start to build. This is a
365-day-a-year job and we’ll take a day or two off, but other than
that, we’ll start moving on to the next chapter.”
THREE STARS
3. Jordan George, Topeka (two
assists)
2. Eriah Hayes, Topeka (one
goal, four shots on goal)
1. Bryce Merriam, Topeka (17
saves)
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