Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
It’s a one-two match-up this weekend in Cleveland, as the league-leading Hershey Bears visit the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse tonight and tomorrow to face the Cleveland Monsters, the North Division’s first-place club.
The Bears, the AHL’s only team to have clinched a berth in the Calder Cup Playoffs so far, took a pair of wins against the Monsters in Hershey earlier this season and are 9-0-0-2 in their past 11 games against Cleveland.
Hershey, which lost forward Matthew Phillips after the parent Washington Capitals recalled him this morning, will take a four-game points streak (3-0-0-1) into the weekend and own an 11-point advantage on Coachella Valley for the AHL lead in points. They are closing in on capturing the Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as the league’s regular-season champions for the second time in four years.
The Monsters, meanwhile, hold a two-point edge on Syracuse for the North Division lead as they wrap up a five-game homestand. After this weekend, seven of Cleveland’s final 10 regular-season games will be on the road.
The Monsters are also dealing with several recalls to the NHL. Trey Fix-Wolansky, Jake Christiansen, Brendan Gaunce, Carson Meyer and Mikael Pyyhtia have all been promoted to Columbus in the last two weeks, and defenseman David Jiricek joined them Thursday.
The road has been good to the Coachella Valley Firebirds.
The Firebirds have gone 9-0-3-1 in their last 13 road contests as they prepare to visit Bakersfield tonight. Six points up on Colorado for the Pacific Division lead, Coachella Valley has been hot overall too, with a 9-0-1-1 mark in their last 11. They have only three regulation losses this calendar year (22-3-3-3), and their loss regulation road loss was Jan. 10 at San Diego.
The AHL record for consecutive road games without a regulation loss is 16, set by the Milwaukee Admirals in 2010-11.
Fifth in the congested Pacific Division race at 70 points, Bakersfield is both trying to catch fourth-place Ontario (71 points) and fend off sixth-place Calgary (69) and seventh-place Abbotsford (68). The reward for finishing fourth is home-ice advantage in the best-of-three first round of the Calder Cup Playoffs.
The Condors have won six of their last eight games, with Jack Campbell (4-1-0, 0.81, .975) and Olivier Rodrigue (2-1-0, 1.96, .932) combining for a .959 save percentage in that time.
Coachella Valley has won all three of their trips to Mechanics Bank Arena this season, including a 4-1 victory March 1.
A massive weekend is ahead for the Laval Rocket as they fight to stay in contention in the tight North Division race.
Laval currently sits sixth in the North Division race, one spot below the cut-off line for the postseason. Games in Belleville tonight and tomorrow will be followed by a Sunday matinee at Toronto, and the Rocket trail both the Senators and the Marlies by three points. Laval also gives up two games in hand to Toronto and one to Belleville; the Rocket will have just nine games remaining after this weekend.
Beginning tonight, the Rocket and Senators meet six times before the end of the regular season, including a two-game set at Place Bell next weekend. Laval had a four-game winning streak come to an end last Sunday in Toronto, and has now lost five of its last six on the road.
In other key weekend games in the North Division, Toronto visits Rochester tonight, and the Amerks host Utica on Sunday.
TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams has been on the American Hockey League beat for nearly two decades for outlets including NHL.com, Sportsnet, TSN, The Hockey News, SiriusXM NHL Network Radio and SLAM! Sports, and was most recently the co-host of The Hockey News On The ‘A’ podcast. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
