Photo Courtesy: @TheAHL



The Utica

Comets have had great success this post-season, having dominated their way to

the Calder Cup finals for the third time in Vancouver Canucks AHL affiliate

history and the first time for the Comets franchise.

Fans across upstate New York (minus Syracuse) are excited, and even in

Vancouver people are realizing the Canucks have an AHL team!

With the

third round over, the Comets have been having success in each round. Their special teams have not been performing

as well as one would hope, but thanks to excellent play from retooled goaltender Jacob Markstrom, and offence from players like Alex Grenier, Sven

Baerschi and Cal O’Reilly, the Comets continue to have success.

In the

final series, the Comets are going to face the LA Kings’ affiliate who play in Boston Bruins country: the Manchester Monarchs. This

is probably the only team the Comets did not want to play against. It’s going to be a difficult series, but let’s see how

these two teams match up.

Schedule

The

schedule follows the same pattern as the previous 2 rounds with a 2-3-2

format. Because the Comets finished

second in the regular season in the league to Manchester, they have lost their

home-ice advantage and will be starting on the road. The Comets have clinched all three first

rounds on home-ice so this could make things difficult for them.

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Team Level

Things start to look scarier for the Comets once we get to team level. The Manchester Monarchs were the only team in the race for the Kilpatrick Trophy in the regular season. While the Comets were first in the league for a good portion of the season, the Monarchs remained consistently good and were able to edge out the Comets. Manchester finished the regular season with 6 more points and 3 more wins than the Comets, finishing at 109 points and a 50-17-6-3 record.

Looking into their regular season statistics, the Monarchs have been a better team than the Comets in nearly every facet. Manchester has scored more goals and prevented more goals, and they’ve generated more shots and suppressed more shots than the Comets. Manchester had a better shooting percentage, but the lone area of relative strength for Utica was the Comets’ much better save percentage.

The Manchester Monarchs were even better than a very good Comets team in our possession estimates and were the best team in the league.



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Diving into possession numbers, we can see that the Comets have been the lesser of the two teams in terms of possession statistics for most of the year, and down the stretch too. The Comets can take solace in the fact that given there is little cross over between the conferences in the regular season, the strengths of schedule (SoS) in the East might be weaker than in the west.

2014/15

Season Head to Head

Because Eastern and Western conference teams rarely cross conference boundaries in the regular season, thanks to the efforts to reduce travel costs in the AHL, these two teams have not only failed to meet this year, but they have never played each other in Comets’ franchise history.

This means we have no evidence how the two teams have matched up against each other and will be going into the series blind.



Skaters

The success from the Manchester Monarchs has largely been generated by their elite talent in their forwards. Despite having played four less games these playoffs, the Monarchs have 5 players with double-digit points, and three players with more points than any of the Comets.

Their offense is currently lead by Jordan Weal (10 goals, 9 assists, 25.6% sh%), rookie Michael Mersch (11 goals, 7 assists, 22.4% sh%), and Brian O’Neill (9 goals, 8 assists, 19% sh%). O’Neill managed to score well over 1.0 points/game in the regular season – a rare feat for the AHL.



It’s clear the ability to generate offence with higher end players goes to Manchester.



Goaltenders

The area of strength in this match up for the Comets is in their goaltending. Markstrom seems to be Swedish for “Impenetrable Puck Wall” and he is doing his best to make sure the Comets win the Calder Cup.



On the Manchester side, their starting goaltender, Jean-Francois Berube, has been below league average in the regular season and has been awful these playoffs. If it was not for their offence, shooting twice the league average, the team would have likely been eliminated.



In this round we can expect Berube’s save percentage to regress upwards, while seeing their shooting percentage regress downwards. The advantage still leans towards Jacob Markstrom and the Utica Comets, and as we all know, a hot goaltender is the great equalizer in the playoffs.



Special

Teams

Special teams are a bit of a mixed bag. The Comets power-play has been awful throughout the regular season but the Manchester Monarchs were the best in the league. The penalty kill was the opposite with the Comets being one of the best while Manchester dropping down to the middle of the pack.

In these playoffs the Comets have been the better team at both the powerplay and the penalty kill. We can expect the Comets to improve in this facet given how low the variance in the success has been. This could be an area the Comets can exploit to help ensure their first victory.



How They

Got Here

The

Manchester Monarchs have not had the most difficult time reaching the

final. Because they were the top ranked

possession team, in a league of tighter parity, it was easy to dominate all

their opponents to the top. No series

went more than five games. Their top end

talent has been shooting in the mid-teens and was able to overcome their woeful

goaltending. Despite being able to score as much as they have, they could be due for some regression and their goaltending is suspect.

Likely

Outcome

The AHL’s Calder Cup final is one of the most difficult to try and predict who the better team is. This round could not have featured a better match up with the #1 and #2 teams, in the points standings and possession standings, facing off against each other.



On one hand you have the Manchester Monarchs, a team who is the best in the league, the best possession team and lead by a very strong offence.

But if there is any team that could beat them, it is the Utica Comets. The Comets boast the better goaltending tandem, are the next best 5-on-5 team in the league, and they look like they may have an edge in special teams.

Unfortunately the prediction for this series is boring. With two strong teams, this series looks like the winner will be decided on the outcome of a goaltending tandem. Can Markstrom continue to play as strong as he has? Will Berube continue to be as mediocre as he has?

If not…

REMINDER: YOU CAN WATCH ALL UTICA COMETS CALDER CUP FINALS GAMES FOR FREE ON AHL LIVE (CLICK HERE) BY REGISTERING AN ACCOUNT AND ENTERING THE PROMO CODE: CALDERCUP





