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Comets Militia: Down on the Farm – March 20th, 2015
alt
Josh W
By Josh W
Mar 20, 2015, 12:00 EDTUpdated:
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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 week was short for the Comets as they only had two games, both on the road in a back-to-back. The Comets managed to return home with all four points as they are looking at the final stretch before the Calder Cup playoffs.  Currently, the Comets are sitting at first in the division with a massive lead but are looking upwards in the conference standings, trying to earn a better seed for the post-season.  The recent bolstering of the Comets defense will surely help!
Read past
the jump to see what went down.

The
Statistics

Despite winning both games this week the underlying numbers for the Utica
Comets have stayed fairly steady; not a big surprise given the large amount of
data for the prior.  The great news is
that everything is trending positively for the Comets and combined with the
reinforcements they will receive from Vancouver and the Canadian Hockey League, the
better their Calder Cup chances appear.

Saturday’s 4-0
Win @ Chicago

[ CometsReview ] [ Highlights ]
The week
started off with a dominance of the previous Canucks farmhand the Chicago
Wolves where Utica had massive puck luck and was able to win in a 4-0
shutout.  All four goals were scored by
Canucks prospects.  Newly acquired Sven
Baertschi saw his point streak end while Cory Conacher scored 2 points to
finally be noticed.  Making Hunter Shinkaruk a healthy scratch the previous game paid off as he scored in this game now that he was motivated.  When Travis Green was asked why he was a scratch, Green responded he felt it was Shinkaruk’s time.  Jacob Markstrom
played his first game since he let in 3 goals on 4 shots in the NHL, earning
himself a shutout.  For the life of me I
cannot figure out why Chicago thought Brent Regner (0 pts, -1, 0 shots, 0 PIMs)
earned the second star on the night.

Sunday’s
4-3 SO Win @ Iowa

[ CometsReview ] [ Highlights ]
The next
night, the travel worn and tired Comets faced the Iowa Wild in a game where
Utica managed to step up their possession dominance.  Unfortunately Travis Green stubbornly played
the tired Jacob Markstrom, which saw the Comets 3-0 lead go to a 3 – 3 tie
largely in part to allowing 2 rare penalty kill goals.  Baertschi picked up another point while Hard
J scored a goal proving that Green’s method of scratching prospects works.  In the shootout both DeFazio and Grenier
scored while Markstrom stopped both of Iowa’s shots.  The Defensive corps saw some major injuries in this game as Andersson was hurt in the second period with an elbow to the head, while Pedan was in a fight and was knocked out a la his Tinordi fight.  I am guessing that the injuries are expected to be for a while as the Comets called up Jeremie Blain from the ECHL.

The Players

NamePosGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPGSOGSoG/GSh%
16
Cal O’Reilly
C
62
7
38
45
-3
10
0.73
82
1.32
11.29%
21
Dustin Jeffrey
C
49
17
24
41
5
18
0.84
95
1.94
34.69%
24
Brandon DeFazio
RW
61
18
19
37
3
76
0.61
151
2.48
29.51%
28
Alexandre Grenier
RW
53
13
20
33
4
57
0.62
132
2.49
24.53%
6
Bobby Sanguinetti
D
51
15
17
32
23
12
0.63
118
2.31
29.41%
47
Sven Baertschi
LW
6
1
5
6
3
4
1.00
10
1.67
16.67%
89
Cory Conacher
LW
6
0
3
3
2
2
0.50
13
2.17
0.00%
10
Brendan Gaunce
LW
61
10
14
24
1
27
0.39
133
2.18
16.39%
17
Nicklas Jensen
RW
47
12
11
23
-14
31
0.49
134
2.85
25.53%
41
Will Acton
C
44
11
8
19
0
26
0.43
73
1.66
25.00%
8
Alex Friesen
C
46
9
12
21
10
49
0.46
70
1.52
19.57%
9
Hunter Shinkaruk
LW
60
8
11
19
-6
26
0.32
122
2.03
13.33%
25
Darren Archibald
LW
56
8
10
18
6
87
0.32
101
1.80
14.29%
3
Alex Biega
D
48
3
14
17
-6
20
0.35
95
1.98
6.25%
37
Andrey Pedan
D
42
3
11
14
6
70
0.33
79
1.88
7.14%
36
Wacey Hamilton
C
31
4
9
13
4
25
0.42
42
1.35
12.90%
34
Carter Bancks
RW
48
6
4
10
6
42
0.21
58
1.21
12.50%
14
Mike Zalewski
C
41
3
6
9
-8
10
0.22
50
1.22
7.32%
40
Peter Andersson
D
47
2
6
8
11
18
0.17
58
1.23
4.26%
2
Travis Ehrhardt
D
36
3
4
7
-8
22
0.19
38
1.06
8.33%
29
Kent Huskins
D
38
1
5
6
4
6
0.16
25
0.66
2.63%
5
Jeremie Blain
D
12
0
2
2
-4
2
0.17
16
1.33
0.00%
11
John Negrin
D
27
0
2
2
0
6
0.07
22
0.81
0.00%

The Goaltenders

NameGPMinGASOGAAWLOTSASVSSAV%
1
Jacob Markstrom
28
1665:37:00
53
5
1.91
19
7
2
785
732
0.932
2
Joe Cannata
1
59:00:00
2
0
2.03
0
1
0
24
22
0.917
3
Pat Nagle
1
58:42:00
3
0
3.07
0
1
0
28
25
0.893
4
Joacim Eriksson
34
1975:43:00
86
0
2.61
17
10
5
920
834
0.907

The Transactions

  • Jacob
    Markstrom was returned and then recalled
  • Joacim
    Eriksson was recalled and then returned
  • Patrick
    Kennedy was assigned to Kalamazoo
  • Jeremie
    Blain was recalled to Utica
  • Joe Cannata was recalled back to Utica from Ontario (ECHL)
  • Frank Corrado was reassigned to Utica
  • Ben Hutton was signed to an ATO with the Utica Comets and will finish the season there before his entry level deal kicks in next season

The Schedule

The Comets
have a busier schedule this week as they try and push to earn the 2nd
or 1st seed in the Western Conference.  They play a back-to-back-to-back series
against teams who will be rested when facing them.  Their opponents are all in the bottom half of
the league but both Rochester and Syracuse are very close geographically adding a
rivalry element to these games, especially against Syracuse.  While the Comets have had success against
Rochester this year they haven’t seen that luck pay off against Syracuse.

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