Quick Hits

• The Forward lines for this game were as follows:
• Shinkaruk – O’Reilly – Grenier
• Gaunce – Friesen – Conachar
• Bancks – Hamilton – DeFazio
• Archibald – Zalewski – Jensen
• The defence-corps for this game was looking like:
• Ehrhardt – Biega
• Corrado – Sanguinetti
• Huskins – Clendening
• The only injured players right now are Will Acton and Andrey Pedan.  Pedan is still suffering from an “upper body injury” (aka concussion when he was KO’d in a fight).  He has been skating lately but won’t be ready to play in the next few days.
• Jacob Markstrom started in net, he is a career 8-1 against the Chicago Wolves in his AHL career, including a 3-0 record in the playoffs.
• Today the Chicago Wolves had their skater depth bolstered with the addition of 7 new ATO’s including Jordan Descheneau – a prospect we here at Canucks Army were praising at the draft.  The Comets have not had any new players added and there has been no word about Jordan Subban or Evan McEneny.
• The Comets have the league’s best forward depth with 14 skaters with 10+ goals compared to just 6 on the Wolves.  Chicago’s second top scorer Ty Rattie is currently up with the Blues in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Comets have lost Sven Bärtschi as he is carrying Brandon McMillian’s bag in Vancouver.
• Should the Canucks be finished before the Comets, only two players are eligible to join Utica: Ronalds Kenins and Sven Bärtschi.
• With the first round being a best-of-five series, the higher seeded team can choose to play the first two games at home or on the road. Green elected to start games on the road, he wanted home advantage for 3 games and wanted the crowd to be a factor in the decisive games
• Hunter Shinkaruk scored the first goal of the game off of the first shot of the game only two minutes into the game.  O’Reilly sent the puck to Shinkaruk in front of the net who shot it over the glove of Wolves’ goaltender Jordan Binnington on his backhand.  Grenier picked up an assist too.  Shinkaruk finished season with 13 points in 15 games.  Check it out here.
• The second goal came nearly 10 minutes later.  Working with Archibald and Huskins Jensen moved the puck up the ice, passing back and forth, and ended up scoring off the crossbar from the left faceoff dot.  Here’s a video of that goal.
• The Comets were in control for the most of the game.  In the third period, with score effects, the Wolves started to push back play.  Magnus Paajarvi scored a minute and a half into the third.  A few minutes later the Wolves almost tied it up but the goal was waived off as it was batted into the net with the skaters hand.
• One area that was hurting the Comets was in special teams.  The Comets gave the Wolves five opportunities with the man advantage. The Wolves are not a team to give out too many penalties, so the Comets are going to need to play more disciplined.
• With 2 minutes left in the game the Wolves pulled their goalie.  The Comets almost scored an empty-net goal but instead it was Paajarvi who scored with 1 second left to tie up the game.

• The game went to Overtime where the Comets went back to dictating play.  Binnington stood on his head and ended up making 38 saves on the night. 
• The game went to double OT.  The last time the Wolves played in 2OT was in 2012 when they were facing the San Antonio Rampage who had Jacob Markstrom in net.
• Finally, 3 minutes into 2OT Alex Grenier worked to get the puck from behind the Wolves net and put a shot on net.  Bobby Sanguinetti was there to tap in the rebound for the Comets Win and his 7th Game-Winning Goal of the year.  (Audio of that).  The Comets now lead the series 1-0 and need 2 more wins to advance.