Checkers Suffer Tough-Luck Loss Against Lake Erie

After falling behind by two goals, the Checkers nearly rallied back late but a controversial call in the final minute spoiled their comeback.

The Checkers found themselves down by two goals early in the final frame after Lake Erie struck twice in 41 seconds. The home team poured on the pressure down the stretch but couldn’t find the back of the net until Phil Di Giuseppe lit the lamp to pull them back in with 2:29 left in regulation.

With their goalie pulled once again and the clock ticking below one minute to go, the Checkers appeared to score the game-tying goal when Brock McGinn threw a puck on net from the corner that struck a sprawled out Pickard and was put over the line by Brody Sutter. As the Checkers celebrated, the refs convened and ruled no goal on the play. Charlotte attempted one last push, but time ran out and the Monsters escaped victorious.

The explanation that head coach Jeff Daniels got from the refs regarding the call was that they had blown the whistle and Pickard had it covered. He saw it differently.

“I thought it was a bad call,” said Daniels. “The puck was sitting loose. The guys drove the net, which is what they’re supposed to do. Tough break.”

“We should be in overtime right now,” said Sutter. “The whistle shouldn’t have blown. The goalie wasn’t within eight inches of the puck. He was back in the net, the goal was sitting on the goal line, his glove was in the air and his blocker was in the air.”

The Checkers came out of the gates firing on all cylinders, dominating the early stages of the game, but went into the dressing room down 1-0 after a costly mistake that went the other way. That strike by the Monsters seemed to affect the Checkers for the next stretch of play.

“We played dumb for a little bit there,” said Daniels. “I didn’t like the way we responded after the goal in the first, and even when we scored the goal in the second we weren’t sharp. The first 15 minutes of the game we were going, then we gave up a goal and all of the sudden we’re back on our heels and not playing.”

Despite their hot start, the Checkers were stifled by the play of Pickard, who set the stage early with several huge stops in net for Lake Erie. But with his strong performance early, the Checkers were poised enough to not be frustrated and stick to their game plan.

“Keep shooting pucks,” said Daniels of his message to the team after Pickard’s hot start. “The tendency sometimes when he’s making a big save, all of the sudden you try to be cute with it and make that extra pass. Keep doing what you’re doing and hopefully one gets by him.”

“You just keep sending pucks towards him and off his pads and get in his face to take away his view of the puck,” said Brock McGinn, who netted the 13th goal of his rookie campaign tonight.

“Any goalie can be beaten,” said Sutter. “Just put pucks on net, get traffic there and try to take away his eyes because goalies can’t stop it if they can’t see it.”

While the outcome was obviously not what they were hoping for, the Checkers showed a lot of fire fighting back late and giving up back-to-back strikes that might have broken this team earlier in the season. Their play down the stretch has shown lots of improvements across the board.

“Earlier in the year when we got down we kind of changed our style,” said McGinn. “I think that right there showed that if we get down and just keep playing our way that bounces will go our way and pucks will go in.”

“We’ve been playing a lot better here the past couple of weeks for sure here,” said Sutter. “We’re a more confident group, guys aren’t squeezing the sticks too hard and we’re just going out and having fun. When you’re doing that, the game comes a lot easier.”

While tonight is a tough pill to swallow, the Checkers will have tomorrow to regroup before a rematch Sunday afternoon with this same Monsters team.

“Taking positives from tonight,” said Sutter on how the team would bounce back. “It was a pretty even game for the most part. They had two really fluky goals off our sticks or off a leg. If you take away those two bounces and we had one bounce against us, it’s probably a 3-1 game for us. We’ve got to look at it that way and go from there.”

“We did a lot of good stuff, just don’t get away from that game,” said Daniels. “That was the biggest message. I thought we did a lot of good stuff in the zone and our cycle game was one of our better cycle games, in the first period anyway, and [Pickard] made some big saves there.”

“We had our push; it was just a little too late there,” said McGinn. “It’s not just a play at the end of the game there that (decides a game). We just need to focus on playing a full 60 minutes and not leaving it down to that last minute.”