A2-Springfield Thunderbirds vs. N3-Laval Rocket
Game 6 – Monday, 7:05 ET, 
(Springfield leads series, 3-2)
Game 1 – Sat., June 4 – SPRINGFIELD 2, Laval 1 (OT) | Recap
Game 2 – Sun., June 5 – Laval 4, SPRINGFIELD 2 | Recap
Game 3 – Wed., June 8 – Springfield 6, LAVAL 3 | Recap
Game 4 – Fri., June 10 – LAVAL 3, Springfield 2 (OT) | Recap
Game 5 – Sat., June 11 – Springfield 3, LAVAL 2 (OT) | Recap
Game 6 – Mon., June 13 – Laval at Springfield, 7:05
*Game 7 – Wed., June 15 – Laval at Springfield, 7:05
*if necessary… All times Eastern
C1-Chicago Wolves vs. P1-Stockton Heat
Game 6 – Tuesday, 8:00 ET,
(Chicago leads series, 3-2)
Game 1 – Fri., June 3 – CHICAGO 5, Stockton 4 (OT) | Recap
Game 2 – Mon., June 6 – CHICAGO 3, Stockton 2 | Recap
Game 3 – Wed., June 8 – Chicago 3, STOCKTON 0 | Recap
Game 4 – Fri., June 10 – STOCKTON 4, Chicago 3 (OT) | Recap
Game 5 – Sat., June 11 – STOCKTON 3, Chicago 2 (OT) | Recap
Game 6 – Tue., June 14 – Stockton at Chicago, 8:00
*Game 7 – Wed., June 15 – Stockton at Chicago, 8:00
*if necessary… All times Eastern
The Heat are sticking around. Again.
Thanks to two overtime wins, Stockton has sent the Western Conference Finals back to Chicago for a Game 6 on Tuesday night.
Dustin Wolf had another strong performance in net in last night’s Game 5, this time with 37 saves. Calgary Flames first-round pick and 2021-22 AHL All-Rookie Team member Jakob Pelletier got back on the scoresheet for the first time in five games via a third-period go-ahead goal, and to finish off the victory, defenseman Connor Mackey delivered the overtime winner.
“[It was] a battle in the corner there,” Mackey said in breaking down his winning goal. “I didn’t really see a winger covering the point. Byron Froese made me a great pass out in the slot. I kind of had the left side of the net open and just fired it in.
“It’s a great team effort all around.”
The Heat have made it clear to the regular-season champion Wolves that they will not be going quietly. They have had to play back-to-back games with the specter of playoff elimination around them. They will do so again on Tuesday at Allstate Arena. And, they hope, the following night for a Game 7 showdown.
“For us, being down 3-0, we just [tried] to focus on winning one game and just sticking together in the room,” Mackey said. “It’s do-or-die for us. We’ve done a great job of that so far, and we’re going to focus on the next one, just win one more again, and then keep it going here.”
Down 2-0 in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals last night, the Thunderbirds had a choice on how to proceed.
“The easy thing is to pack it in and get ourselves ready for the game on Monday,” Springfield head coach Drew Bannister said.
Instead the Thunderbirds dug in further, confident that their play had controlled the game so far and would eventually pay off for them.
“We were playing really good hockey,” Bannister said. “We felt comfortable. Guys kept working. We had plenty of opportunities again. The bounce we got on the second goal... I just think we’d been working so hard, eventually there was going to be a bounce like that.”
The Thunderbirds continued to attack and worked Rocket goaltender Cayden Primeau relentlessly, eventually finishing with 47 shots. Nathan Todd halved Laval’s lead, and Dakota Joshua followed with the third-period tying goal to set up National Hockey League veteran James Neal’s overtime heroics.
Said Neal, “We didn’t want to leave without getting the win.”
The Thunderbirds tapped into an environment that they have fostered all season, something that winning goaltender Charlie Lindgren has said compared quite similarly to the one the parent St. Louis Blues have had for years.
Lindgren recounted, “After they got that second goal, Steve Santini came right down and said, ‘Keep us in it. We’re going to come back and win this game.’
“And sure enough we did. We’ve got a great group. It’s a blast to play with them, and hopefully we’ve got a long ways to go yet.”
Now the Thunderbirds leave town having taken two of three games at Place Bell and with an opportunity to end the series on home ice, possibly as soon as Monday’s Game 6. But playing three high-pressure road games in a frenetic environment was an American Hockey League development opportunity that Bannister relished for his young prospects.
“This is a really tough place to play,” Bannister said, “and their crowd brings a lot of energy to this hockey club. I’m proud of the way our guys reacted. We came in and we were a calm hockey team. We dealt with the crowd noise and the energy that they brought to their team and momentum swings.
“I thought we remained focused on some of the difficult times. This was a really tough place to play, a good group of fans that follow them, and they make it exciting to play in. We had a lot of fun coming here.”
Managing emotions is one of the many keys ― and chances for growth that a postseason run provides ― to winning the Calder Cup.
Laval head coach J-F Houle will again be stressing that message as his Rocket prepare for Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Monday in Springfield.
“I think penalties again [are a lesson],” Houle told reporters after last night’s contest. “It gets tiring to kill. They do a hell of a job, our killers. But to conserve energy, you need to kill less, that’s for sure.”
The silver lining for the Rocket is that their penalty kill is a perfect 25-for-25 in the series. However, repeatedly putting the Thunderbirds on the power play is a risky move. And besides, every shorthanded situation means tiring out the team’s penalty-killing units and disrupting bench flow.
“It’s an intense game,” Rocket captain Xavier Ouellet said. “It’s an emotional game. Guys are battling hard. But we need to find a way to stay away from the box.”
In Stanley Cup Playoff action last night, the Tampa Bay Lightning won their third consecutive Prince of Wales Trophy, capturing the Eastern Conference championship with a 2-1 win over the New York Rangers... Ondrej Palat recorded two more points with a pair of assists and Andrei Vasilevskiy turned aside 20 shots... Igor Shesterkin made 29 saves, finishing his postseason with a .929 save percentage in 20 games... In Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper and Colorado’s Jared Bednar, the Stanley Cup Final will feature two former Calder Cup-winning head coaches for the first time since Philadelphia’s Fred Shero and Buffalo’s Floyd Smith reached the Final in 1975.
Watch the Calder Cup Playoffs on AHLTV
Don’t miss a second on the road to the 2022 Calder Cup championship. AHLTV features live streaming of every AHL game in high definition on desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile devices, as well as OTT platforms such as Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. A subscription is just $29.99 for the entire postseason, or just $8.99 for a day pass. Visit AHLTV.com for details.
