Today Is Nothing But Good News Day

With another practice day for the Allen Americans as they prepare to take on the Rapid City Rush tomorrow night at the Allen Event Center (AEC), I was trying to think of something to write about this morning. I was reminded of a huge retirement community in Florida where several friends have moved to enjoy their retirement years. The community is so large they have their own daily newspaper and parts of the paper are reserved for good news only. In that spirit, today will be a good news only blog post. The last few blogs have been all about what is going wrong with this team so devoting one day to all the positives seems only fair. Here goes:

- Allen has won two of their last three games and in the one loss at Missouri the Americans outshot the Mavericks 22-2 in the third period and almost pulled out a win.

- The Americans are undefeated on the season when scoring first with a perfect 4-0 record. There are only four other teams in the league (Florida, Ft. Wayne, Indy, Tulsa) that have not lost a game when scoring first.

- Chad Costello has scored in seven of the last eight games (3 goals 9 assists), leads the ECHL in assists and is second in points.

- Derek Mathers has quickly become a presence with the Americans providing the toughness for the team. He has played in just 11 games but leads the ECHL in penalty minutes (73) and fighting majors (9). According the the website dropyourgloves.com Derek has yet to lose a fight, winning six of nine fights with the others being rated a draw.

- Allen is undefeated when games go past regulation time, an area where they struggled last season. The Americans are 1-0 in overtime and 1-0 in shootouts. Last season they were 3-3 in overtimes and 3-4 in shootouts.

- The Americans have been a strong third period team thus far having outscored (21-16) and outshot (174-143) their opponents in the third period.

- There have been only four times in the ECHL this season when a team has taken 22 or more shots in the third period. Allen has two of the four. They outshot Missouri 22-2 this past Tuesday and on October 25 against Tulsa they outshot the Oilers 25-3 in the third period. 

- Greger Hanson has a point in six of the last eight games (4 goals 6 assists) and on the season is scoring an average of 1.07 points per game.

- Spencer Asuchak already has more goals (6) and assists (6) than he scored during the regular season with Allen last year. He is averaging .86 points per game versus .56 last season and his shooting percentage has doubled from last season (20.7% vs 10.5%).

- In his second season with Allen, Eric Roy has improved his average points per game from .58 to .79. He has 11 points (3 goals 8 assists) which ranks him fifth in the ECHL among defensemen. 

- Joel Chouinard is sixth in the ECHL in plus/minus with a +10.

- Allen is averaging almost five more shots on goal per game than last season. This season the Americans are ranked #7 averaging 33.43 shots per game. Last season they were ranked #24 averaging 28.82 shots per game.

- Last season Allen finished 20 points out of first place in the Central Division. They are currently just five points out of first place in the Mountain Division.

-  Just a reminder of how talented the Allen Americans are can be seen by the following stats looking at the 23 players currently on the roster. Nine players were drafted by the NHL. 21 of the the 23 players on the roster have played in the AHL and there are 10 players with more than 20 AHL games.  Combined, the roster has 750 AHL games under their belts.

- Here are a few photos from practice yesterday courtesy of Dianne Webster:

"Everybody with eyes on the shooter"

Kale Kerbashian riding the bike while talking to trainer and watching practice

Jamie Murray

- There you have it, an entire blog post with nothing but positive news. Have to admit it was fun to research and write. Tomorrow it will be back to normal with the Allen vs Rapid City game preview.




DID YOU KNOW: Winning the regular season championship is not a good predictor of playoff success. Once the playoffs start any team is capable of winning. Allen has won four straight championships but only once (2012-13) did they have the best regular season record.