Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Maybe what the Springfield Thunderbirds put the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins through will prove to be a blessing.
After a Game 1 victory and a 3-0 third-period lead in Game 2, Springfield turned the series around on the Penguins. The Thunderbirds responded with four goals for an overtime victory. Going to Springfield, the Penguins managed to take a close Game 3 victory to give themselves two shots to put away an opponent that had already eliminated the Charlotte Checkers and Providence Bruins.
The Penguins missed that first chance in Game 4, leaving themselves facing elimination for the first time this postseason. But they certainly did not miss on that next opportunity. They came back home for Game 5 and routed the Thunderbirds, 8-1, to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals.
It was a statement delivered relentlessly and without mercy by a team that had worked to finish third overall in the AHL regular season and was not about to see that effort frittered away.
At long last Springfield is behind the Penguins, who host Toronto in Game 1 tonight at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza. This will be Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s deepest foray into the Calder Cup Playoffs since 2014.
They go into this match-up with the Marlies as a team with two key components. They have goaltending and they have been put through the tests that eventually winning a Calder Cup demands.
Start with Sergei Murashov’s goaltending dominance this postseason. Look around at the four clubs still remaining in the Calder Cup Playoffs. Having a dominant goaltender is a must, and the Penguins certainly have one.
At the start of the century, goaltenders won the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as the most valuable player of the Calder Cup Playoffs six years in a row. It was a group that included AHL Hall of Fame member Frederic Cassivi as well as Carey Price, a rookie then before he went on to become a Montreal Canadiens legend. More recently, Artūrs Šilovs earned that award last year with the Abbotsford Canucks, and Hershey’s Hunter Shepard did the same in 2023.
Murashov, 22, is 6-3 with a 1.74 GAA and a .943 save percentage. Stellar regular-season work had already made him a strong candidate for a promotion to the Pittsburgh Penguins next season.
And though the Penguins are exceptionally young, they have been through some of those necessary playoff scares. Thank the Thunderbirds for that. The last team to win the Calder Cup and come through undefeated was the Hershey Bears, but it was 38 years ago and with a shorter playoff format. To win the Calder Cup in this era means being able to take some setbacks, even the really painful ones, come through them and keep going.
It’s a youthful bunch. Newcomer Bill Zonnon, a 2025 first-round pick by the Pittsburgh Penguins, is 19 years old and has quickly shown that he is more than ready for the Calder Cup Playoffs. So has another addition from the Canadian Hockey League, defenseman Harrison Brunicke, now a regular. Rutger McGroarty, Ville Koivunen, Atley Calvert, Gabe Klassen, Owen Pickering, Tanner Howe and Finn Harding are all 22 or younger on Kirk MacDonald’s roster.
When Kyle Dubas, who won the Calder Cup as general manager of the Marlies in 2018, came to Pittsburgh in 2023, he inherited an organization that had paid the price for years of making strong pushes for the Stanley Cup. Those pushes had paid off with Stanley Cup titles in 2009, 2016 and 2017. But it had meant dealing away picks through those many years.
But the draft picks that Dubas did inherit are paying off this spring. Murashov and Pickering come from the 2022 draft class. Tristan Broz, the team’s leading scorer this postseason, is a 2021 pick. They already have four 2024 selections on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton roster in Brunicke, Harding, Howe and defensemen Chase Pietila. Pittsburgh made 13 picks last year, headlined by Zonnon.
Now those players are eight wins away from the Calder Cup. If they are not in MacDonald’s lineup, they are at the very least on-call to jump into action if necessary. They’re skating each day late into May and June. They are immersed in a winning playoff atmosphere.
The Calder Cup Playoffs are not a linear, stress-free experience. There are heartbreaking nights.
Nothing is guaranteed beyond an education in pro hockey.
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
