With the Comets entering their first ever post-season, it almost seems ironic that their first ever series will be against their NHL parent club’s previous affiliate: The Chicago Wolves.  What a way to bridge the old affiliate with the new.

The locals of Utica are quite excited as their team has earned a post-season berth for the first time in this franchise history.  Not only did they earn a seed, they dominated the west, winning the Western Conference banner and have been a dominant force all season.  Locals in upstate New York have high expectations for this team. 

Those high expectations may matter little if you are facing the AHL’s version of the L.A. Kings, or if your opponents have a strong string of good luck.  With that aside, let’s look at the breakdown between these two teams as they are about to go head-to-head in the first round of the Calder Cup Championships.

In order to save money the first round of the Calder Cup is a best-of-five series.  The format varies between a 2-2-1 format (if the two teams are less than 300 miles apart) or a 2-3 series with the first two games starting in Chicago.

The Utica Comets and the Chicago Wolves are over 450 miles apart so the format of the series is the later of the two.  The Comets are already in Chicago, having left Monday after driving to Albany and flying to Chicago. 

This format gives Chicago home advantage in the first two games.  The home team historically wins 56% of all matches.  This makes it imperative for the Comets to try and earn a minimum of 1 win in Chicago before returning home.

Comparing these two teams head to head we generally see that Utica has the advantage in most categories.  In terms of offence, the Comets are a better team at shot generation and had the finishing ability to be a higher scoring team.  They have a better goals-against largely because they have better goaltending.  The Comets are also the better possession team.

The areas that Chicago has the advantage in is in their ability to suppress shots against, and they’ve been able to convert their shots at a higher rate than the Comets.  It’s unknown if Chicago can repeat this in a 5 game series, and the difference between the two teams is fairly negligible too.

When you compare how the two teams have trended over the year it is apparent that the Comets have been consistently a better team.  This series looks to be in favour of Utica.

Over the season the Comets and Chicago have played 4 games against each other and the Comets lead that series with a record of 2-1-1-0.  Those numbers don’t tell the full story so let’s take a look at each game:

Overall the season seems to be fairly close, with games going back and forth between the two teams.  The Comets just barely out-scored the Wolves and outshot them in the season series.  In all 4 games the Comets have an Est. Fenwick Close of 57.52% with the Wolves outplaying the Comets only in the 4th game.  

The Utica Comets offence is lead by Cal O’Reilly (10 goals, 51 assists), Brandon DeFazio (21 goals, 22 assists), and Alex Grenier (17 goals, 26 assists).  The Comets also have offence being generated from the back-end with top defencemen Bobby Sanguinetti 4th on the team in scoring (16 goals, 24 assists).

Rookies Hunter Shinkaruk (16 goals, 15 assists) and Brendan Gaunce (11 goals, 18 assists) are also doing their part to contribute.

The Chicago Wolves are lead in their offence by Shane Harper (32 goals, 18 assists), Pat Cannone (14 goals, 33 assists), and ex-Comet/Canuck Jeremy Welsh (20 goals, 21 assists).  Their top end seems comparable, though the Comets do not have a 30+ goal scorer like Harper. 

The Wolves defence is not as active offensively as their top defencemen (editor’s note: VANCOUVER GIANTS LEGEND) Brent Regner (6 goals, 23 asists) is the most involved member from the blueline corps.

The Wolves also lack in much production from their rookies.  This is partly because the Wolves typically lean on their veterans as they have a larger desire to win than develop (a large reason why the Canucks broke off their affiliate deal).  Petteri Lindbohm is the highest scoring freshman with 6 goals and 12 assists in 53 games, while the recent addition of top prospect Robby Fabbri could provide some much needed scoring to the Wolves.  

One area that has helped the Comets excel all year is their excellent goaltending – especially that coming from Jacob Markstrom who has performed at near elite AHL levels for the past few years.  Backup Joacim Eriksson has performed reasonably well and both goaltenders have faced a higher workload than their Chicago counterparts – reflecting their teams ability to better suppress shots against.

Many of the ex-Wolves playing with Chicago will be familiar with Matt Climie as he was the goaltender who was put in net over Joe Cannata during the Canucks time partnered with the Wolves.  He is starting to become an older goaltender so it is no surprise to see the torch being passed to Jordan Binnington who is nearly a decade younger and has had an excellent season posting above-average numbers.

As long as Jacob Markstrom continues playing like his AHL-self then the Comets have the clear advantage here.

In terms of special teams these two franchises are split.  Utica is worse off in their power play, the area that they have struggled with most of the year, but the difference is fairly small here.  The gap between these two teams is not nearly as far as in the penalty kill where the Comets have been an elite team for the most of the season.

Best-of-five series are harder to predict than best-of-seven series.  They are much more subjected to shooting variances and a lucky team can easily advance. 

There are some things that the Chicago Wolves do better than the Comets without a doubt.  The Wolves are better at suppressing shots against, they have elite top-end scoring from their forwards and they have the stronger power play.

The Comets do nearly everything else much better than the Wolves.  They are a much stronger possession team, the second best in the entire league.  They are better at generating offence and they have better depth within their scoring.  Their goaltending is much stronger and their penalty kill has been good all year.  It is most likely that the Comets are the team to advance out of this series.