By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
Funny game, this hockey. Especially for goaltenders.
On Friday, Ukko Pekka-Luukkonen faced 55 shots from the Syracuse Crunch and stopped 54, allowing the visiting Rochester Americans to escape with a 2-1 in overtime.
On Sunday, Lukkonen allowed three goals on 36 shots as the Amerks won 5-3 at Toronto.
And on Wednesday night on home ice, against that same Crunch team that needed a mind-boggling 55 shots just to score one goal five nights earlier, UPL was beaten three times on the first 11 shots and ended up watching the final 10:09 of the game from the bench.
Oh, the Amerks were 6-3 losers, falling to 26-20-3-2.
Such is the development curve for a goalie in the American Hockey League.
“It’s facing adversity and failing and owning it, as Upie does, and growing from it and learning from it and attacking it the next day,” Amerks coach Seth Appert said.
Most importantly, it’s keep the number of bad goals to a bare minimum. That wasn’t the case against the Crunch, who led 3-0 before the game was 15 minutes old.
Even after the Amerks pulled within 4-3 at 7:49 of the third period on Arttu Ruotsalainen’s second goal of the game, Pekka-Luukkonen gave up a goal high on the short side to Antoine Morand at 9:51 on what really should have been a nothing shot.
Appert then pulled UPL and inserted Aaron Dell.
“I thought four of the five goals were very poor,” Appert said. “He was really good last week. He’s a young goalie. Yes, it’s his third year pro, but all three of his seasons have been injury or COVID interrupted, so he’s still working to get the amount of games necessary to have that feel and consistency.”
The belief is that with consistency comes fewer games with four and five goals allowed.
“The biggest thing now is the bad games need to be solid,” Appert said. “The great games are great; he has that in him, he’s a fabulous goaltender.
“But too many nights what needs to be just a solid, competitive start – maybe you don’t have it that night, but you keep it to three and give your team a chance – those are bleeding to too many goals and you can’t win.
Like Wednesday. Pekka-Luukkonen just didn’t have the aura of a goalie with confidence, and eventually was replaced.
“I probably should have done it after the fourth (goal),” Appert said. “I thought about it after the first because he didn’t look on but I wanted to let him fight through it.
The big picture is what’s important to the organization. Every goalie has an off night.
“I have tremendous belief in Upie,” Appert said. “He needs to keep working, he needs to keep working, so his off nights are C-plus/B-minus games, not C or lower. Your off nights, you still want to give your team a chance to win. The way to do that is to keep working and eliminate soft goals.”
While UPL struggled, he wasn’t alone in the C or worse performance. The Ruotsalainen-Brett Murray-Linus Weissbach line was on the ice for the first and third Crunch goals.
“I thought some of our go-to guys on defense and that line were sleepy in the first period, including Upie as well,” Appert said, “and then you’re chasing the game.”
That’s very much a recipe for a loss, since so many of the team’s key players remain out because of injury (Jack Quinn, Michael Mersch, Sean Malone, Ryan MacInnis and Brendon Biro).
“A big key for us is to not find ourselves down,” said defenseman Mitch Eliot, who assisted on two goals. “We had trouble breaking out of our zone, and that’s a team that really feeds off turnovers.”
Glad to hear the coach speak candidly, making no excuses (that started to creep in a bit a couple weeks ago, when the team played some awful hockey). The team was terrible last night, as they have been at home recently. At least last night, as has been the case every Wednesday there were only a handful of fans on hand to suffer.
Don’t know what to make of these guys. Its true, the talent level right now is not AHL calibre, but as Appert has said, the go-to guys must be better, whether that is fair or not. And as we have seen, UPL remains a work in progress.
Team may probably still sneak into a low playoff seed, but unless they get their talent back and avoid more injuries, the prospects of surviving a best 2 of 3 series isn’t very promising.