Wolves survive, advance to round two

The Chicago Wolves earned the final spot in the second round of the 2014 Calder Cup Playoffs with a 4-2 victory over the Rochester Americans in Game 5 of their Western Conference quarterfinal series at Allstate Arena on Sunday afternoon.

The Wolves move on to meet the Toronto Marlies in one Western Conference semifinal; the regular-season champion Texas Stars face the defending Calder Cup champion Grand Rapids Griffins in the other.

See also: Western Conference semifinals to open Thursday

Chicago struck early in Game 5 with Shane Harper scoring just 2:02 into the contest off a nice return pass from Sebastian Wannstrom.

Rochester tied things up with 4:39 to play before the first intermission when Brayden Irwin one-timed home a feed from Luke Adam for his third goal in the last two games.

Adam then picked up his second goal of the series 2:01 into the second period to put the Amerks in front, 2-1. It was Rochester’s second power-play goal of the afternoon and eighth of the series.

But the Wolves grabbed the lead back with two power-play goals of their own in the last three minutes of the period.

After a wild scramble in front of the Amerks net, the puck came out to Brent Regner and he blasted it home to tie the score with 2:32 remaining. Then, Dmitrij Jaskin camped out in front and redirected a pass from Keith Aucoin past Andrey Makarov with 26.8 seconds to go, and the Wolves were up 3-2 after 40 minutes.

Chicago allowed just seven shots in the third period with Rochester pressing to tie and survived a late Amerks power play before Taylor Chorney iced the victory with an empty-net goal off a terrific individual effort at 18:59.

Jake Allen, who was lifted from a start in Game 4 for the first time since Oct. 12, 2012, bounced back with the season on the line and stopped 21 of 23 shots for the win. Makarov made 32 saves on 35 shots for Rochester.