Marlies Start Season With Win Over Rochester

A new day, and a new year for hockey at Ricoh Coliseum. Today marked the start of the Toronto Marlies’ 2012/13 AHL sesaon, making them, for a rare occasion, the number one hockey game in town. The team is a little better than it should be – with guys like Jake Gardiner, Nazem Kadri, Korbinian Holzer, Keith Aucoin, and Ben Scrivens spending lockout time here. But the opposing teams are often much of the same – take an roster like Rochester’s tonight, for instance.

Luke Adam, Cody Hodgson, and Marcus Folingo were just a few of the Sabres future bright spots in their path tonight. With a Western Conference Champions banner added to the corner, the Marlies were out tonight to show that they could repeat last year’s success, and against their 2012 first round opponents, did just that, winning 3-1.

The first period opened up with the Marlies going to their 2011/12 strong point – the penalty kill. This isn’t exactly where you’d like to be, especially with Captain Ryan Hamilton being in the box, but the unit showed its strength until drawing a powerplay of their own. While it wasn’t successful, the next one would be. Just under five minutes in, Nick Tarnasky took a holding call, and Jake Gardiner was quick to take advantage, absorbing a drop pass from Nazem Kadri before firing home the season’s first goal. That wouldn’t be all for the Marlies, this period either, as they took advantage of another powerplay just four minutes later, with Hamilton being the one to put home a pass from Joe Colborne that left Rochester goalie David Leggio way out of position.

The second period wasn’t as kind to them. Far from the overwhelming shot count advantage that they had in the first, the Marlies had a period of sloppy passes and missed connections. Perhaps the biggest example of this was a penalty to Ben Scrivens for playing the puck outside of the trapezoid, that had an exclamation point put on it when Marcus Folingo fired a knuckler from the blue line on the powerplay to bring the game within one, with nearly fifteen minutes to spare in the period. That said, neither team was able to capitalize further from this point on, despite three powerplay opportunities (two for Toronto, one for Rochester).

The third period saw Toronto back on track – at one point outshooting the Amerks 13 to 1. On their first powerplay opportunity of the game, Mike Zigomanis put home a garbage goal that was waived off due to goalie interference. That didn’t stop Ryan Hamilton from finishing the job, though – pulling a Mikhail Grabovski-esque spinorama off in front of the net to give the blue and white an insurance marker. A few penalties followed, including a routhing trade up between Kadri and Amerks rookie Zemgus Girgensons, but nothing came out of it. Rochester left their net empty with a minute to go in the game, but it didn’t make a difference in the final score, as the Marlies walked out with a win to start the year.