Missouri Wins Governor's Cup, Lavoie Wins ROY, New Players Yanakeff & Tarasuk, , Playoff Tiebreakers

- The first order of business this morning is congratulating the Missouri fans and team for winning the regular season championship Governor's Cup last night by beating the St. Charles Chill 8-0. It was a goal set by coach Scott Hillman at the beginning of the year after the Mavericks were ousted in the seventh game of playoffs on opponents ice in prior years. It is a great accomplishment for Missouri but certainly no guarantee in the race for the Presidents' Cup. In seven of the last eight years the winner of the Governor's Cup did not win the Presidents' Cup. The exception was last year when the Allen Americans won both trophies.

- Congratulations to Alex Lavoie as to nobody's surprise Alex was named CHL Rookie of the Year today. It was the most lopsided vote in any of the voting categories this season with Lavoie earning 63% of the vote. It could be a big day for the Americans as the Best Defenseman award will be announced this afternoon and Tyler Ludwig is a finalist for that award. Alex is still on loan to Oklahoma City and will not play tonight.

- Darryl Bootland will return to the lineup tonight

- Two new players will be in uniform for the game tonight. The new backup goalie is Willie (Wil) Yanakeff who practiced with the team yesterday and just finished his collegiate career at Michigan State University. The other player, a defenseman, just arrived last night and was at the pregame skate this morning and expected to play tonight is Steve Tarasuk. He started the year with the San Francisco Bulls (ECHL) but that team folded midseason. He then signed with the Ontario Reign (ECHL) and played fourteen games with them before being traded to the Evansville Iceman (ECHL). Rather than reporting to Evansville, Tarasuk signed with Allen for the playoffs. Steve made the ECHL all-star team in 2010-2011. Tarasuk has plenty of connections with the Allen Americans both past and present. He played with Kale Kerbashian in juniors (2008-2009 London Knights), he played for Darryl Bootland's brother and with Brian McMillin in Kalamazoo (2010-2011), he played with Mike Montgomery and Spencer Asuchak in Ontario (2011-2012), he played with former American's defensemen Scott Langdon and Dylan King earlier this year in San Francisco and he was just traded by the Ontario Reign where he played with another former Allen defenseman, Matt Register. He skates with Bryan Pitton in the summer. As they always say, hockey is indeed a small world. Here is info on Yanakeff & Tarasuk courtesy of Hockeydb:

Willie Yanakeff

Goalie -- shoots R
Born Apr 30 1992 -- Jerome, MI
[21 yrs. ago]
Height 6.02 -- Weight 185

 

			RS Scoring			RS Goalie Stats										PO Scoring
Season	Team	Lge	GP	A	PIM	Min	GA	EN	SO	GAA	W	L	T	Svs	Pct	GP	A	PIM
2008-09	USNTDP Under-18 Team	NAHL	17	1	4	1030	36	0	3	2.10	11	4	2	394	0.916
2009-10	Sioux City Musketeers	USHL	12	0	0	613	33	0	0	3.23	5	4	0	259	0.887	-	-	-
2009-10	Waterloo Black Hawks	USHL	10	0	0	528	30	0	2	3.41	5	5	0	205	0.872	-	-	-
2010-11	Michigan State University	CCHA	14	0	2	794	28	0	2	2.11	6	5	1	353	0.927
2011-12	Michigan State University	CCHA	23	1	2	1365	57	0	0	2.50	13	9	1	672	0.922
2012-13	Michigan State University	CCHA	15	0	0	864	44	0	1	3.06	5	8	1	413	0.904
2013-14	Michigan State University	Big-10	6	0	0	302	14	0	1	2.77	2	3	0	142	0.910

Steven Tarasuk

Defense -- shoots R
Born Nov 1 1989 -- Thornhill, ONT
[24 yrs. ago]
Height 5.10 -- Weight 165

 

			Regular Season						Playoffs
Season	Team	Lge	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	+/-	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM
2004-05	Milton Icehawks	OPJHL	1	0	0	0	0
2005-06	Markham Waxers	OPJHL	43	2	21	23	56
2006-07	Kitchener Rangers	OHL	59	0	6	6	43	16	8	0	2	2	0
2007-08	Kitchener Rangers	OHL	37	3	17	20	23	24	--	--	--	--	--
2007-08	London Knights	OHL	30	3	14	17	25	5	5	1	2	3	4
2008-09	London Knights	OHL	59	3	17	20	60	23	14	0	3	3	8
2009-10	London Knights	OHL	67	19	48	67	59	35	12	1	9	10	14
2009-10	Utah Grizzlies	ECHL	--	--	--	--	--	--	2	0	0	0	4
2010-11	Kalamazoo Wings	ECHL	65	4	21	25	53	-3	4	0	3	3	0
2010-11	Bridgeport Sound Tigers	AHL	3	0	1	1	0	-1	--	--	--	--	--
2011-12	Ontario Reign	ECHL	58	7	25	32	61	7	--	--	--	--	--
2011-12	Idaho Steelheads	ECHL	12	1	5	6	4	0	10	0	4	4	12
2012-13	Lausitzer Foxes	2.GBun	43	10	22	32	44
2013-14	San Francisco Bulls*	ECHL	37	3	12	15	9	-9
2013-14	Worcester Sharks*	AHL	Statistics Unavailable
2013-14	Ontario Reign*	ECHL	14	1	4	5	6	-7

- Thought it would be a good time to talk about tiebreakers for playoff seeding since the standings are so close it is almost certain there will be some ties. Should two or more teams be tied in points for any seeding issue throughout the playoffs, the following tiebreakers will be used:
1. Most Wins (not including shootout wins)
2. Head to Head Record
3. Goals For/Against Differential
 With three games remaining Allen (33 wins) has the tiebreaker over Rapid City (30 wins) and Denver (32 wins).

- As mentioned yesterday Quad City comes to Allen shorthanded due to injury and call ups. They will be missing several of their best players. Their backup goalie will be Eric Levine who was just waived by Allen. The Mallards and Americans have played three times so far this year with Allen holding the edge 2-1. They split two games in Quad City in early February by identical scores of 5-2 and Allen defeated Quad City 6-2 in their only meeting in Allen on February 23rd. Here is the team by team comparison:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  Allen Americans            Quad City Mallards  
RESULT OF LAST GAME               WIN  5-4 vs WIC            LOSS  1-3 vs MIZ    
GAMES PLAYED                      63                         62                  
RECORD                            38-20-5                    29-23-10            
POINTS                            81                         68                  
HOME RECORD                       19-8-3                     18-11-3             
AWAY RECORD                       19-12-2                    11-12-7             
SHO RECORD                        5-4                        2-7                 
LAST 10 GAMES                     7-2-1                      3-5-2               
LAST 5 GAMES                      4-0-1                      1-3-1               
OCTOBER                           5-0-1                      1-1-1               
NOVEMBER                          7-6-0                      6-2-3               
DECEMBER                          5-4-1                      8-3-1               
JANUARY                           8-1-2                      4-3-3               
FEBRUARY                          5-7-0                      7-7-0               
MARCH                             8-2-1                      3-7-2                             
SCORING FIRST                     23-6-3                     21-6-6              
LEADING AFTER 1ST                 18-6-0                     11-3-3              
LEADING AFTER 2ND                 23-2-3                     18-2-2              
TIED AFTER 1ST                    10-4-3                     14-9-4              
TIED AFTER 2ND                    11-4-2                     7-3-3               
TRAILING AFTER 1ST                10-10-2                    4-11-3              
TRAILING AFTER 2ND                4-14-0                     4-18-5              
WHEN OUTSHOOTING OPPONENT         18-11-1                    15-12-4             
1 - GOAL GAMES                    15-3-5                     10-9-10             
GOALS FOR PER GAME                3.81                       3.23                
GOALS AGAINST PER GAME            3.30                       3.08                
SHOTS FOR PER GAME                33.56                      31.56               
SHOTS AGAINST PER GAME            32.89                      30.45               
POWER PLAY RECORD                 66 - 322   20.5%           41 - 301   13.6%    
PENALTY KILLING RECORD            59 - 329   82.1%           38 - 235   83.8%    
SH GOALS FOR                      10                         10                  
SH GOALS AGAINST                  9                          9                   
PIM AVERAGE                       22.29                      14.05               


SCORING BY PERIODS    1ST  2ND  3RD  OT  TOTAL  
Allen                 68   87   79   6   240    
Opponents             63   61   79   5   208    
                      
Quad City             56   65   76   3   200    
Opponents             54   74   53   10  191 

- In the St. Charles Chill's 8-0 loss last night against Missouri, former Allen player John Snowden got in a fight with Maverick defenseman Matt Stephenson and was ejected from the game for biting. John will take a lot of grief and ridicule over this incident but you can tell from watching him play in Allen last weekend and his actions last night that he is giving it everything he has in a situation where it would be easy to stop playing. I for one, admire John's passion. Not the best way to display your passion and he will surely pay the price but it has been a long frustrating season for the Chill.

- With some great late season crowds the CHL average attendance is about to exceed last year's average of 3706. Missouri drew 5618 last night to raise the league wide average for this season to 3701 with 15 games remaining.

Courtesy CHL Memes

Courtesy CHL Memes

DID YOU KNOW: The Missouri Mavericks won the regular season championship (Governor's Cup) for the first time in franchise history last night and with three games remaining they have already scored more points (90) than any team in their franchise history.