The Allen Americans defeated the Tulsa Oilers 5-3 on Sunday afternoon before a Mother's Day crowd of 1588 at the Allen Event Center. It was the last of a four games series against the Oilers in which the Americans earned six of eight points. It also was the last of 13 games Allen and Tulsa play this season. The Americans record against the Oilers (9-3-1-0) is the best of any team they play this season.
- Allen's long homestand has come to an end. For the rest of month the Americans play nine of 10 games on the road. The lone remaining May home game will be next Monday (May 17) against Kansas City). Allen will end the season with three home games the first week in June.
- The game yesterday had a little bit of everything. The first four goals of the game were an even strength goal, a power play goal, a shorthanded goal and a penalty shot goal. For good measure a fight was sandwiched in between the four goals.
- Allen seemed to have the game well in hand scoring the first goal of the game on Sam Ruopp's first professional goal and took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. The Americans had a 3-0 lead midway through the third period and a 4-1 lead at the second intermission. However, two quick Tulsa goals early in the third period closed the gap to 4-3 and the thought of a second Tulsa comeback was in the air. The Oilers had scored three goals in the third period on Saturday to defeat the Americans. It wasn't to be on Sunday afternoon as Allen put the game away late in the third period on a great defensive play by Spencer Asuchak who stripped the puck from a Tulsa player for an odd man rush and then made a perfect pass to Corey Mackin who scored his team leading 24th goal of the season.
- The goal scorers for Allen were Sam Ruopp (1), Les Lancaster (19), Corey Mackin (23, 24) and Scott Conway (8). Here are the video highlights from the Allen Americans YouTube channel:
- Here is the game recap issued by the Allen Americans: https://allenamericans.com/media/game-recap/americans-take-series-win-with-5-3-victory-over-the-oilers/
- Allen came away with a 5-3 win but made it tough on goalie Jake Paterson for the second straight game. The Americans were out shot yesterday 42-28 including 29-14 in the last two periods. Under normal circumstances, after Paterson had to face 47 shots in the loss on Saturday and the short turnaround with the early start on Sunday, Frank Marotte would have played on Sunday. That wasn't an option for coach Martinson as Jake was the only healthy goalie. Paterson had a great game stopping 39 of 42 shots on Sunday. His totals for the weekend were 82 saves on 88 shots for a save percentage of .932. That is facing a lot of shots especially when you consider the elapsed time from the start of the game on Saturday until the end of the game on Sunday was only 21 hours and 23 minutes. Paterson's season save percentage is .926 which is #2 in the ECHL and his GAA is ranked #3 (2.41).
- Special teams were the difference in the game yesterday even though each team had only one power play chance. Allen converted on its chance as Les Lancaster scored his seventh power play goal which leads all ECHL defensemen. Matt Register assisted on Lancaster's goal to increase his league lead in power play assists to 22. Allen not only stopped Tulsa on its lone power play attempt but Corey Mackin scored his league leading (tied) fourth shorthanded goal.
COACH'S CORNER
"We continue to have more puck possession even in periods when we are being outshot. We need to produce more shots from our puck possession."
"Justin Kapelmaster is back after his stint with Cleveland. Justin played in two games, won them both, had a GAA of 1.95 and a .933 save percentage."
"Frank Marotte will not be available for our trip to Kansas City this week."
"With a compressed playoff schedule this season we will have three goalies on the playoff roster. I would expect all playoff teams will carry three goalies."
"After a day off today we will have a practice on Tuesday and won't fly to Kansas City until game day on Wednesday."
"Our schedule is unbalanced again as it has been most of the season. We play a road heavy schedule (9 of next 10 games) the rest of May."
"Our team should continue to improve as all of the young players we have recently acquired get more game experience. Most of them played very few games in the past year."
"We have won seven of our last eight games and we need to keep that momentum going forward."
OTHER COMMENTS
- The odd stat of the day is after 394 games played in the ECHL this season there have been only four successful penalty shots and the Allen Americans have factored in three of the four. Spencer Asuchak (January 31) and Les Lancaster (February 13) converted on Allen's only penalty shot attempts and in the game yesterday Tulsa's Matt Lane scored on a penalty shot against Jake Paterson.
- Les Lancaster scored his 19th goal of the season yesterday and now has eight more goals than any other defenseman in the ECHL. In the last 10 ECHL seasons only one defenseman has reached the 20 goal plateau and that was former Allen defenseman Stepan Falkovsky who had 21 goals in 2016-17 when he played for Adirondack.
- How did Allen fare during the last six weeks when it played the majority of games at home? Since March 24 the Americans played 21 homes games and just four road games. Here is what I wrote back in March, "The next six weeks will be a great opportunity for Allen to make up ground and take the lead in the Western Conference. Between March 24 and May 9 the Americans will play 21 home games and just four road games. This is clearly the sweet spot of the schedule for Allen after all of the road games early in the season. To give you an idea of the opportunity this presents for the Americans, their road points percentage this season is .565 with a record of 13-10-0-0 compared to their home points percentage of .818 with a record of 8-1-2-0."
- The results after the 21 home games are good but not great. Allen's record was 14-6-0-1 for a points percentage of .690, a far cry from the .818 in the first 11 home games. The hope for being in first place at this point is gone as Allen is still in third place in the conference.
- Allen has arguably the toughest schedule in the conference the rest of the season because it has the most road games remaining (9) and the fewest home games remaining (4). The Americans road points percentage is just .556 compared to their home points percentage of .734. Allen will need to outperform on the road if it expects to challenge Wichita and Fort Wayne for the top two spots in the Western Conference and home ice advantage in the opening round of the playoffs. Remember, the playoffs are all best of five series this season.
DID YOU KNOW: Corey Mackin scored his fourth shorthanded goal of the season yesterday. The only Americans player to score more shorthanded goals since Allen joined the ECHL was Greger Hanson who had five shorties in 2014-15. Here is the ECHL Stats post for today with some shorthanded gosl stats.
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