Martinson Comments About Game & Clarke, Stats & More

The Allen Americans got back on the winning way last night defeating the Arizona Sundogs 5-3 before a crowd  of 2185 at Tim's Toyota Center. The Americans were led by Greger Hanson (2 goals 1 assist) who was the games #1 star and Alex Lavoie (2 goals) who was the #2 star. The rubber match of the three game series will be played tonight. There were some fireworks at the end of the game which could very well carryover into the game tonight. Former Allen player, Garrett Clarke, intentionally shot the puck into the Allen bench after the game was over and received an "intent to injure" game misconduct penalty. The incident prompted coach Martinson to say this when I talked him after the game, "The reason we didn't take Clarke back after he was cut by Toledo was strictly a character issue."

- Martinson was pleased with how the team played saying, "We played Allen hockey tonight, we played physical, and it was a good win."

- Bryan Pitton will get the start in goal tonight.

- Greger Hanson has certainly given the team a boost since his arrival with his speed and energy and has eight points (3 goals 5 assists) in five games. There is no longer that reliance on the top line to do all of the scoring as scoring is much more balanced the last few games.

- Jonathan Lessard returned to the line up after injury and the top line (Lessard, Lavoie, Fox) looked good playing together.

- With the win last night Allen went from fifth place in the standings to a tie for third (23 points) as the top five teams in the league are separated by only four points. Rapid City (26 points) and Missouri (24 points) both won and remain the class of the field. While the points are close the Rush and Mavericks have three games in hand over Allen & Denver who are right behind them in the standings.

- With Jonathan Lessard coming off IR Dallas Ehrhardt was placed on injured reserve.

- The penalty kill allowed two goals in only four attempts in the game. Arizona has scored three power play goals in the last two games which matches the total  number of power play goals they had scored at home all season before the Allen series. Made me think of how nice it would be to have Brian McMillin back killing penalties. Sure hope the Americans can make this happen if Brian doesn't sign with another team in Europe.

- Scoring a point a game is something everyone notices when looking at stats. At this point the Americans have five players in this category:
Alex Lavoie - 26 points in 18 games
Kale Kerbashian - 20 points in 18 games
Darryl Bootland - 17 point in 17 games
Phil Fox - 9 points in 8 games
Greger Hanson - 8 points in 5 games

- Alex Lavoie continues his torrid scoring pace. His 26 points leads all CHL rookies in scoring (6 more points than second place & 10 more than third place) and he is third in scoring amongst all CHL players. With his two goals last night including the game winner he now lead the team in points, goals (tied with Bootland ), assists, power play goals (tied ), power play assists, and game winning goals.

-  With some of the higher drawing teams playing at home this weekend (Rapid City & Missouri) the CHL average attendance has risen to 3395. This is just over 300 per game less than the average for the entire year last year. 

- It was nice to hear Tommy Daniels interview equipment manager Kacee Coberly between periods in honor of  Kacee recently passing his 500th game as an equipment manager. Quite a milestone for a 26 year old. If you haven't read the story I did about Kacee take a look as it is a good read. You can find it in the archives, "Meet Kacee Coberly, Equipment Manager Extraordinaire" dated October 30, 2013.



DID YOU KNOW: The longest tenured equipment manager in the NHL is Rip Simonick who has over 3400 NHL games with the Buffalo Sabres. Robert "Rip" Simonick is in his 41st season with the organization as Buffalo’s Equipment Manager.