The beloved Monsters scored a nice bounceback win Thursday night after dropping an easily winnable contest on Tuesday to Charlotte. Tonight and Tuesday night, we meet the division-leading Admirals once again in Milwaukee.
News
- Shawn Szydlowski was released from his PTO on Friday and headed back to the Komets
- Reid Petryk was called up from Ft Wayne on Friday also
- Paul Carey has been recalled by the Avalanche for the 2nd time this year. So we basically swap out Carey for Petryk. No offense to Reid, but that's not a killer deal.
- Andrew Agozzino is nearing some pretty important marks in the Monsters all-time scoring stats. He has 51 goals, just 7 shy of David van der Gulik's 58 at the top of the list. His 128 points is just 3 shy of #1 TJ Hensick. I have a feeling he'll be tops in both categories by the end of the season. If he plays every game for the rest of the year, he will also rank first all-time in games played.
- Dan Maggio passed Patrick Bordeleau for all-time LEM PIMs leader on Thursday with 439.
- Troy Bourke joined Ben Street as LEM players who have won games on penalty shots this year. I promised Canary a gif, so check it out:
Injury updates:
Colin Smith (knee, broken leg, whatever) will be out 6-8 weeks
Duncan Siemens (wrist) is skating with the team, should be back soon
Tomas Vincour (UBI) is also practicing
Sam Henley (LBI) has a walking cast and hasn't heard from the docs when he'll be ready
Mike Sgarbossa (UBI) ???, was at a PR function this week with no obvious injury equipment
Max Noreau (shoulder) is out for the season
Just a hunch, but I think one of the forwards will be ready soon, maybe even for this trip.
Week 19 Recap
The Monsters set a season high for shots on goal Tuesday with 40 but only managed a single score and dropped an easy 2 points to another bottom feeder. LEM is now 1-4-1 against Iowa, Rochester & Charlotte, the last 3 teams in the WC. If they miss the playoffs, this might be the most regrettable reason.
The Checkers dominated most of the 1st and got a goal from multiple defensive breakdowns occurring at once. The Monsters dominated the 2nd, outshooting CHA 16-10 but got nothing but another goal against. 24 seconds into the 3rd Paul Carey scored the lone LEM goal on a breakaway and despite rifling many shots at backup John Muse they couldn’t get the equalizer. 2-1 loss.
After the game, Coach Dean was unimpressed with the effort from a few guys, saying that there were opportunities for players to step up into an increased role and that didn’t happen. Also said LEM had 12 turnovers in the 1st period alone, which is fucking terrible. He wouldn’t get more specific than "LBI" but said Colin Smith would be out 6-8 weeks, which is good news and means he might be back for anywhere between 3 and 13 games down the stretch.
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After sleeping through the first half of the game Thursday, the Monsters found themselves down 2-1 and getting dominated in shots 7-20. For absolutely no discernible reason at all, they flipped the switch to "on" and dominated the rest of the game. Thanks to another fabulous game-tying goal from Andrew Agozzino, Lake Erie headed to the 3rd with momentum. Halfway through, the Checkers were called for too much man and just as that was to expire Troy Bourke made a strong drive to the net and was hauled down and awarded a penalty shot. Bourke converted and the Monsters held on for the win. Shots ended up 26-12 in the second half of the game and LEM somehow had the advantage overall 33-32. Nice job!
Preview: Milwaukee Admirals
The Admirals lead the Midwest Division no thanks to the Monsters. LEM has gone 3-1-1 against Milwaukee so far this season. This will be the 6th & 7th meetings out of 10 total and the Monsters and Admirals are both 6-2-2 in their last 10 games. With all the injuries to key players, this is going to be a real toughie.
Lines from Thursday's game:
Aggz/Street/Carey
Schumi/Hish/Ryan
Bourke/Heard/Mags
Meurs/Cheek
Moose/Stalls
Corbett/Bruno
Martin/Beaupre
Leach
Picks
Sami
Scratched: Szydlowski
Injured: Siemens, Sgarbossa, Noreau, Smith, Henley, Vincour
Carey's out, someone like Ryan or Cheek will replace him on the 1st line and Reid Petryk will go in somewhere. With Szydlowski back with FTW there's only 11 healthy forwards so we'll go with 7 D but I don't see Leach playing much.
Schedule
Sunday afternoon at Milwaukee 4:00pm in the ET, radio on WKNR
Tuesday night at Milwaukee 8:00pm in the ET, radio on WKNR
Links
Next up
A pair of games at home vs the Rockford IceHogs on Friday/Saturday
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Neither game conflicts with the beloved Avalanche so stop by and check out your Lake Erie Monsters in a couple of tough division battles. As usual, updates and recaps will be here and on twitter. Enjoy!