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Marlies fall to Comets in Overtime

By Jeff Veillette

Jan 31, 2015, 17:56 ESTUpdated:

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The Toronto Marlies got away with being outplayed yesterday, coming out ahead despite being outshot by over thirty. This wasn’t a performance that they could repeat tonight if they wanted to go back to back. On one hand, the gap wasn’t as big, but the defensive holes remained and came back to haunt them, turning a 2-0 lead into a 3-0 loss over the Utica Comets.

The Rundown

Toronto opened the scoring a little over halfway into the first period. Connor Brown, working from what’s become his office of sorts over to the right of the trapezoid, saw a streaking Troy Bodie and set him up for a wrister that beat Joakim Eriksson. Just three minutes later, and four seconds into the only powerplay of the game, William Nylander set up Brendan Mikkelson for a point shot to extend the lead. After twenty, things looked good.

It wasn’t mean to be, however. Two minutes into the second period, Dustin Jeffrey took advantage of a misplay by Matt Finn and Eric Knodel, and before the period closed, Alexandre Grenier beat Antoine Bibeau with a quick-reaction snapshot to tie the game.

Toronto had perhaps their strongest period in the third, generating a bunch of scoring chances that could have won them the game. However, Eriksson stood tall and extended play. Three minutes into overtime, a bad transition left Andrew MacWilliam alone against three attacking Comets, leading to Andrey Pedan ultimately scoring the game winner.

Blue Warrior

Just like Christopher Gibson was last night’s warrior, we’ll give this one to Antoine Bibeau. The Marlies were peppered with forty two pucks over the sixty minutes and Bibeau stopped all but three of them, often in dramatic fashion. Overall, a good performance out of him.

Notes

Tyler Biggs amazingly lead the team in shots, with seven. I don’t know if that’s a career high at the pro level, but I wouldn’t be shocked it fit was.
William Nylander had a couple of really nice moves throughout the game – you can see that his skillset is top notch. Unfortunately for the Marlies, some of the players that he deked out included himself.
There were just three penalties in this entire game, and two of them were coincidental minors for unsportsmanlike conduct. I thought yesterday’s game was disciplined, but this is bringing it to a whole new level.
Attendance was 6339 today; another good crowd after a slow start to the season.
Toronto plays their next game on Wednesday vs. the Grand Rapids Griffins. It’s an 11AM school day game, so bring earplugs and don’t party too hard the night before!

Photo courtesy of Christian Bonin / TSGPhoto.com