Even their normally boyish faces are starting to take on the grizzled looks of playoff hockey veterans. Beards are growing, blood is pursing their lips and bruises are everywhere.

For the Komets to get to Game 7 of the North Division finals, Mitchell Heard and Garrett Meurs had to play beyond their years, and they have.

The Komets needed scoring because first team All-League forward Shawn Szydlowski suffered a season-ending knee injury in Game 3 of the series. The Komets needed grit because the Toledo Walleye were doling out hits all over the ice and slashes after almost every whistle.

Heard, 23, and Meurs, 22, both prospects of the Colorado Avalanche, have responded.

“I hadn’t played playoff hockey in a couple years since my junior days, so getting this experience is exciting and fun,” said Heard, a second-round NHL draft pick in 2012. “I want to win just as much as any guy in this room does. We’re going to come together as a unit, and we’re going to pull off the win in Game 7.”

Confident words from a player who has played with brashness, crashing the net, tangling with the Walleye’s best players and bringing a level of intensity the Komets needed before he was sent to them by Lake Erie of the higher-level American Hockey League midway through the first-round series with Kalamazoo.

Heard began the season with Fort Wayne, tallying 10 goals and 16 points in 12 games, and then skated 51 AHL games and totaled six goals and 12 points. In the playoffs, he has three goals and eight points in nine games, but his worth has gone beyond those statistics – checking, faceoff victories and hustle.

While Meurs, the youngest player on the roster, was scoreless in 20 regular-season games with Lake Erie, he had 12 goals and 22 points in 30 games with Fort Wayne.

“Playoffs is always the most fun time of the year,” said Meurs, a fifth-round draft pick in 2011, who has two goals and five points in nine playoff games. “And the way we’ve been playing these games has made it even more fun.”

The Komets forced GameÃ¢ Â¯7 with a 3-2 double overtime victory Sunday, courtesy of a Brett Perlini goal. While the Komets have lost all three games in Toledo – where they will play Wednesday – they won all three series games at Memorial Coliseum in overtime.

Including the regular season, the Komets are 0-5 at the Huntington Center. They did win in Toledo on Jan. 4, 3-2 in an overtime shootout, but that was in an outdoor game at a baseball stadium.

Nothing has seemed to rattle the Komets’ young guns, not the loss of Szydlowski or defenseman Joey Leach, so a Game 7 at the Huntington Center may not fluster them, either. “When you lose guys like Syzdlowski and Leach, you’ve got to have everybody step up,” Meurs said. “You can’t fill those holes with just one guy. Everybody has to step up a little bit and we’ve all done that so far.”

Toledo has already won a Game 7 in these playoffs, defeating Wheeling 2-1 in overtime April 29. Fort Wayne’s Gary Graham has never been a head coach in a Game 7, but he hasn’t been afraid to go with youth in the postseason.

The only player on the roster younger than Heard, other than Meurs, is 22-year-old goaltender Roman Will. He played the first seven games of the playoffs instead of veteran Pat Nagle and went 4-3 with a 2.74 goals-against average and a .914 save percentage.

Defenseman Connor Kucera, 23, who had never played a pro game, has been steady in his first four games out of Bowling Green.

“Other guys have got to elevate their game, and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” Heard said.

On Monday, South Carolina beat Florida in six games to advance to the Eastern Conference finals. Fort Wayne or Toledo would have home-ice advantage over South Carolina.

jcohn@jg.net