The Moose came into tonight’s game against the Admirals with a 2-2-0-0 record through the first four games of their six-game road trip. Manitoba had suffered losses to Grand Rapids and Chicago while sweeping its weekend set in Iowa. Despite the mixed results on the road, the Moose still boasted a 7-3-0-0 overall record and sat second in the Central Division.
Tonight marked the first meeting of the season between the two clubs, and their first encounter since Manitoba eliminated Milwaukee in the opening round of last season’s Calder Cup playoffs. The Admirals entered the contest having played three fewer games than the Moose.
It was shaping up to be an intriguing battle of offence versus defence. The Moose entered the contest as the highest-scoring team in the AHL with 41 goals, while the Admirals had allowed a league-low 14 goals against. Of course, Milwaukee had also played the fewest games in the league, but even accounting for that discrepancy, its goals-against average would still rank among the top five in the AHL.
Something had to give between the league’s most productive offence and one of its stingiest defences.
Lineup news:
Still no Walker Duehr who joined the team in Chicago but has yet to play a game this season. The D all remain the same but the pairs shuffled from yesterday’s game. Fabian Wagner came in for Tyson Empey.
Moose lineup:
Wahlin – Yager – Chibrikov
Gregor – Zhilkin – Ford
He – Julien – Barlow
Wagner – Yoder – Burnside
Gustafsson – Thrun
Nause – Phillips
Freij – Barteaux
DiVincentiis
Notable:
Lots of good chances for the visitors but Matt Murray was excellent in net including stopping 17 shots in the first period alone.
After 40 minutes shots were 26-18 in favour of the Moose but the scored was 2-0 in favour of the Admirals.
Manitoba was given a gift to start the final frame with a 5 on 3 but failed to convert. Even late in the game they were given a power play chance but took a penalty and the Admirals put the game out of reach with their third goal of the contest.
It was academic at this point and it was simply watching to see if the Moose could break the shutout but Murray kept making all the stops.
With one second left on the clock, Nikita Chibrikov was being Nikita Chibrikov and was making friends right till the end of the game in Milwaukee.
The Moose have dropped back-to-back games for the first time this season, falling 3-0 to Milwaukee in their first shutout loss of the year. The power play was anything but special, going 0-for-7.
With the loss Manitoba drops to 7-4-0-0 on the season.
While it provides little solace after the loss, it has to be pretty cool for the Moose to be in Milwaukee on the night the city’s Brewers captured their first-ever World Series championship, defeating the Rays in Game 5 down in Tampa Bay (which, coincidentally, is where the Jets happen to be this evening).
Multi-point game:
None.
Highlights:
Player post-game media:
Up next:
The team is travelling to Rockford tomorrow where they will take on the IceHogs on Friday night to wrap up the six-game road trip.
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