Comets Militia: Down on the Farm – April 21st, 2015

9 years ago

Courtesy: UticaComets.com

We are back
with this week’s Comets Militia report, where we review all the latest
in news,
statistics, rumours, gossip and made up narratives regarding the
Vancouver Canucks
farm team: The Utica Comets. The Utica Comets have finished their regular season winning the Western Conference and have added a new banner to the rafters at the Aud.

Read past
the jump to see how this week went down.

The
Statistics

The Utica
Comets have finished up the regular season as one of the top two teams in the
league. Their
underlying numbers look good as they have put themselves into a good position
for a Calder Cup run. A lot of their
success seems to be on the backs of their strong goaltending. The shot creation and suppression numbers are
good, but are not elite in the league.
Most worrying is that their penalty kill, which has been a top-3 special
team all year, has fallen the last few weeks.

This is going to be the last regular Comets Militia post of the year. We will continue our Comets coverage in various ways as they make their way towards the Calder Cup finals.

Friday’s 3-2 Win @ Rochester

[ Comets Recap ] [ Highlights ]

An
excellent game from the Canucks prospects to finish off the year. The Comets had the edge in possession while
Jacob Markstrom gave the Comets a Quality
Start to help ensure the Comets earned 2 points. Goals were scored by various Canucks
prospects and assisted by more prospects with Jensen and Corrado earning 1st
and 3rd stars. Joseph LaBate
and Ben Hutton did not play this week as the team was too focused on trying to
win the Western Conference Banner.

Saturday’s 3-2
Win @ Adirondack

[ Comets Recap ] [ Highlights ]

The last
game of the year saw the Comets face Adirondack, a team they have played 12
times on the year (15% of the season) and a team they have earned 20 points
from. The Comets were outplayed, thanks
to having played the night before, but the Canucks prospects stood strong, with
an excellent game from Darren Archibald. With the Western Conference banner on the
line Travis Green leaned on Jacob Markstrom to play in back-to-back games. Markstrom delivered with a 39 save
performance and a Quality Start to
win the game. The Comets were leading 3
– 0 until the last 30 seconds when the Flames quickly scored 2 goals on the man
advantage and nearly tied it up.

Ultimately the Comets prevailed and have clinched 1st place in the Western Conference. And here was the view from
Utica when their bus returned to the Aud at midnight.

The Players

	Name	Pos	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PPG	SOG	SoG/G	Sh%
47	Sven Baertschi	LW	15	7	8	15	6	4	1.00	38	2.53	18.42%
16	Cal O’Reilly	C	76	10	51	61	10	10	0.80	96	1.26	10.42%
89	Cory Conacher	LW	20	7	9	16	6	22	0.80	64	3.20	10.94%
6	Bobby Sanguinetti	D	61	16	24	40	24	16	0.66	138	2.26	11.59%
28	Alexandre Grenier	RW	67	17	26	43	13	71	0.64	182	2.72	9.34%
24	Brandon DeFazio	RW	75	21	22	43	4	92	0.57	186	2.48	11.29%
8	Alex Friesen	C	60	10	20	30	13	57	0.50	85	1.42	11.76%
17	Nicklas Jensen	RW	59	14	14	28	-12	39	0.47	154	2.61	9.09%
26	Frank Corrado	D	35	7	9	16	12	31	0.46	73	2.09	9.59%
44	Adam Clendening	D	11	1	4	5	5	28	0.45	22	2.00	4.55%
41	Will Acton	C	45	11	8	19	-1	26	0.42	73	1.62	15.07%
9	Hunter Shinkaruk	LW	74	16	15	31	2	28	0.42	155	2.09	10.32%
10	Brendan Gaunce	LW	74	11	18	29	-1	31	0.39	154	2.08	7.14%
36	Wacey Hamilton	C	41	5	10	15	7	27	0.37	53	1.29	9.43%
25	Darren Archibald	LW	70	14	10	24	10	107	0.34	138	1.97	10.14%
37	Andrey Pedan	D	42	3	11	14	6	70	0.33	79	1.88	3.80%
15	Ronalds Kenins	LW	36	5	7	12	6	23	0.33	61	1.69	8.20%
3	Alex Biega	D	62	3	16	19	-3	24	0.31	125	2.02	2.40%
5	Jeremie Blain	D	14	0	4	4	-2	2	0.29	17	1.21	0.00%
20	Ben Hutton	D	4	1	0	1	1	2	0.25	4	1.00	25.00%
34	Carter Bancks	RW	57	6	8	14	7	44	0.25	65	1.14	9.23%
14	Mike Zalewski	C	55	3	9	12	-4	18	0.22	62	1.13	4.84%
40	Peter Andersson	D	51	2	8	10	13	20	0.20	63	1.24	3.17%
2	Travis Ehrhardt	D	41	3	4	7	-9	22	0.17	45	1.10	6.67%
29	Kent Huskins	D	50	1	5	6	7	8	0.12	32	0.64	3.13%
11	John Negrin	D	35	0	3	3	6	12	0.09	29	0.83	0.00%
19	Joseph LaBate	C	2	0	0	0	0	2	0.00	5	2.50	0.00%

Cal
O’Reilly has played in every game this year with the Comets.
The top
scoring rookie, Hunter Shinkaruk, finishes 38th in the league in the
rookie scoring race. Last year Alex
Grenier was in the top 10 on a much more offensively inept team.

The Goaltenders

	Name	GP	Mins	GA	SO	GAA	W	L	OT	SA	SVS	SV%
1	Jacob Markstrom	32	1879:36:00	59	5	1.88	22	7	2	895	836	0.934
2	Joe Cannata	5	301:46:00	10	0	1.99	3	2	0	147	137	0.932
3	Joacim Eriksson	41	2371:06:00	100	0	2.53	22	10	7	1087	987	0.908

Jacob
Markstrom finishes 2nd in the AHL in goaltender save
percentage. Markstrom also has an 81.25% Quality-Start % – a number that is highly likely to be unsustainable, especially as that was only over a sample of 32 starts.
Joacim Eriksson finishes
below average at 38th.

The Transactions

Curtis Valk
was recalled to Utica – this is just a paper transaction as ECHL Playoff
Rosters are limited, he is still in a knee brace (courtesy of Sarah Hobday).
Ashton Sautner was released from his AHL PTO. He is still under contract with Vancouver, so it’s unclear why this is.