The Need to Knows
- The Places: Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, CA and UW-Milwaukee Arena in Milwaukee, WI
- The Affiliates: Seattle Kraken and Nashville Predators
- Places to Watch: AHLtv, Locally on on KESQ News Channel 3
- Places to Listen: KDGL 106.9 The Eagle
Know Your Enemy
- The Admirals are as battle tested as any team in the AHL playoffs this year; having gone all five games in their last two series against Texas and Grand Rapids, and coming out the victor in both
- Like the Firebirds, the Admirals’ regular season success earned them a bye.
- Winger Zach L’Heureux is Milwaukee’s leading scorer and the AHL Playoffs’ leading scorer; with 8 goals in 10 games.
- Their goaltender is Troy Grosenick, who happens to be fourth overall in the playoffs among netminders in Save-%, rocking a 0.924 in 6 starts.
Series Preview
Well. Well. Well. Look who the cat dragged in.
The Central Division has once again spat up the suspiciously Kraken-flavored Admirals and their admittedly very cool logo to face the Firebirds.
The Ads and the Birds already have a storied Western Conference Championship under their belts from last year, where Coachella Valley nearly took Milwaukee to the limit before dispatching them. Now that the playoff format has moved to Best-of-7 from here on out, the war of attrition that is playoff hockey finally begins to resemble the big boy clubs’, and it’s more than likely that the ‘Birds and Ads will go the distance. One side wants a crack at the title again, and the other just wants revenge.
Don’t think the conditioning and health boost of the bye will save you either; Milwaukee was good enough this year to get one too.
CV needs to be ready for war.
X-Factors Heading into Game 1
Stopping Zach L’Heureaux (in more ways than one)
The Firebirds have run into a lot of league leaders this playoffs, but none have seemingly been able to command the playoffs this year quite like Milwaukee’s Zachary L’Heureux, who leads the entire AHL in playoff scoring this year with 8 goals in 10 games, and 13 points in that same stretch. Playing not just as a scoring phenom, but also as a deeply dangerous shorthanded option.
All that would be fine and good, but there’s one aspect of L’Heureux’s game that makes him a difficult puzzle to solve: he’s got a fuse. Oh it may not be short…but it’s there, and if it goes off, he can and will do something unfathomably stupid. This is something that he struggled with in junior, and it appears that the Admirals/Preds have seen no real reason for him to improve on it. Stopping his scoring prowess, as well as making sure he doesn’t snap and try to behead someone, is going to be a tall order that the Firebirds must fill.
Shutting down their playmakers
Obviously, keeping L’Heureux from being a human highlight reel is big for the continued push of the Firebirds.
That doesn’t mean he’s the only one, however.
Egor Afanasyev has been an absolute demon out there, getting 9 points in 10 games, and two major playmakers in Joakim Kemell and Juuso Parssinen both with 8 in the same time…but critically, most of these points are assists. All three of these guys are a major part of the Admirals attack, and have wisely been distributed throughout their lineup to improve scoring. If they can break that down, then they can force their depth scoring, which has existed, just not nearly to the extent of previous opponents, to try and pick up the slack.
Solving Grosenick Early (again…again)
Hopefully the next team the Firebirds play isn’t one that lives or dies based on the back of impressive goaltending but frankly given the teams left in the playoffs, I am not holding my breath.
So anyway the Ads have a really good goaltender that the Firebirds need to figure out, and fast!
Grosenick’s ability as an AHL goalie is impressive, and his team’s ability to support him even moreso; feeling every bit like a baby Predators squad of your dreams/nightmares not just because of their stout defensive work in front of Grosenick, but because Grosenick himself has been a more than adequate replacement for last year’s complete wildcard in Yaroslav Askarov.
Solving Grosenick (and also the defense in front of him) will be a tough challenge; the Ads are a genuinely difficult team to score on when they smell blood in the water (just ask Grand Rapids), but if there’s any team that can figure out a league leading goaltender and defense, it has been proven over and over again to be Coachella. They just gotta do it again.
Coaching Trial Runs
Hopefully I get this up before the official announcement is made well I didn’t get that up nearly in time, but the big thing you should know coming out of this series is that no matter what happens, there’s a very good chance that the Firebirds’ head coach will have been promoted to Kraken head coach.That means that Bylsma’s run will go as far as the ‘Birds will carry him, and with Jessica Campbell and Stu Bickell as potential candidates for replacement. Though currently the word through the grapevine is that Jessica is currently the frontrunner, and will receive long looks at how she handles such duties throughout the next few games. Exciting stuff!
How that will impact the series? Hard to say, but it will be interesting to see how Coach Campbell responds. No better time to learn than the playoffs.
Series Schedule
- Game 1: Wednesday, May 29 – Milwaukee vs Coachella Valley, 7pm PT
- Game 2: Friday, May 31 – Milwaukee vs Coachella Valley, 7pm PT
- Game 3 – Tuesday, June 4 – Coachella Valley @ Milwaukee, 5pm PT
- Game 4 – Thursday, June 6 – Coachella Valley @ Milwaukee, 5pm PT
- *Game 5 – Saturday, June 8 – Coachella Valley @ Milwaukee, 4pm PT
- *Game 6 – Monday, June 10 – Milwaukee vs. Coachella Valley, 7pm PT
- *Game 7 – Wednesday, June 12 – Milwaukee vs. Coachella Valley, 7pm PT
- * = If necessary
And of course, since you’re reading this now…Game 1 is tonight!
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