Courtesy: UticaComets.com



We are back

with this week’s Comets Militia report, where we review all the latest in news,

statistics, rumours, gossip and made up narratives regarding the Vancouver Canucks

farm team: The Utica Comets.



The week was short for the Comets as they only had two games, both on the road in a back-to-back. The Comets managed to return home with all four points as they are looking at the final stretch before the Calder Cup playoffs. Currently, the Comets are sitting at first in the division with a massive lead but are looking upwards in the conference standings, trying to earn a better seed for the post-season. The recent bolstering of the Comets defense will surely help!



Read past

the jump to see what went down.



The

Statistics

Despite winning both games this week the underlying numbers for the Utica

Comets have stayed fairly steady; not a big surprise given the large amount of

data for the prior. The great news is

that everything is trending positively for the Comets and combined with the

reinforcements they will receive from Vancouver and the Canadian Hockey League, the

better their Calder Cup chances appear.

Saturday’s 4-0

Win @ Chicago

[ CometsReview ] [ Highlights ]

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The week

started off with a dominance of the previous Canucks farmhand the Chicago

Wolves where Utica had massive puck luck and was able to win in a 4-0

shutout. All four goals were scored by

Canucks prospects. Newly acquired Sven

Baertschi saw his point streak end while Cory Conacher scored 2 points to

finally be noticed. Making Hunter Shinkaruk a healthy scratch the previous game paid off as he scored in this game now that he was motivated. When Travis Green was asked why he was a scratch, Green responded he felt it was Shinkaruk’s time. Jacob Markstrom

played his first game since he let in 3 goals on 4 shots in the NHL, earning

himself a shutout. For the life of me I

cannot figure out why Chicago thought Brent Regner (0 pts, -1, 0 shots, 0 PIMs)

earned the second star on the night.

Sunday’s

4-3 SO Win @ Iowa

[ CometsReview ] [ Highlights ]

The next

night, the travel worn and tired Comets faced the Iowa Wild in a game where

Utica managed to step up their possession dominance. Unfortunately Travis Green stubbornly played

the tired Jacob Markstrom, which saw the Comets 3-0 lead go to a 3 – 3 tie

largely in part to allowing 2 rare penalty kill goals. Baertschi picked up another point while Hard

J scored a goal proving that Green’s method of scratching prospects works. In the shootout both DeFazio and Grenier

scored while Markstrom stopped both of Iowa’s shots. The Defensive corps saw some major injuries in this game as Andersson was hurt in the second period with an elbow to the head, while Pedan was in a fight and was knocked out a la his Tinordi fight. I am guessing that the injuries are expected to be for a while as the Comets called up Jeremie Blain from the ECHL.

The Players

Name Pos GP G A PTS +/- PIM PPG SOG SoG/G Sh% 16 Cal O’Reilly C 62 7 38 45 -3 10 0.73 82 1.32 11.29% 21 Dustin Jeffrey C 49 17 24 41 5 18 0.84 95 1.94 34.69% 24 Brandon DeFazio RW 61 18 19 37 3 76 0.61 151 2.48 29.51% 28 Alexandre Grenier RW 53 13 20 33 4 57 0.62 132 2.49 24.53% 6 Bobby Sanguinetti D 51 15 17 32 23 12 0.63 118 2.31 29.41% 47 Sven Baertschi LW 6 1 5 6 3 4 1.00 10 1.67 16.67% 89 Cory Conacher LW 6 0 3 3 2 2 0.50 13 2.17 0.00% 10 Brendan Gaunce LW 61 10 14 24 1 27 0.39 133 2.18 16.39% 17 Nicklas Jensen RW 47 12 11 23 -14 31 0.49 134 2.85 25.53% 41 Will Acton C 44 11 8 19 0 26 0.43 73 1.66 25.00% 8 Alex Friesen C 46 9 12 21 10 49 0.46 70 1.52 19.57% 9 Hunter Shinkaruk LW 60 8 11 19 -6 26 0.32 122 2.03 13.33% 25 Darren Archibald LW 56 8 10 18 6 87 0.32 101 1.80 14.29% 3 Alex Biega D 48 3 14 17 -6 20 0.35 95 1.98 6.25% 37 Andrey Pedan D 42 3 11 14 6 70 0.33 79 1.88 7.14% 36 Wacey Hamilton C 31 4 9 13 4 25 0.42 42 1.35 12.90% 34 Carter Bancks RW 48 6 4 10 6 42 0.21 58 1.21 12.50% 14 Mike Zalewski C 41 3 6 9 -8 10 0.22 50 1.22 7.32% 40 Peter Andersson D 47 2 6 8 11 18 0.17 58 1.23 4.26% 2 Travis Ehrhardt D 36 3 4 7 -8 22 0.19 38 1.06 8.33% 29 Kent Huskins D 38 1 5 6 4 6 0.16 25 0.66 2.63% 5 Jeremie Blain D 12 0 2 2 -4 2 0.17 16 1.33 0.00% 11 John Negrin D 27 0 2 2 0 6 0.07 22 0.81 0.00%

The Goaltenders

Name GP Min GA SO GAA W L OT SA SVS SAV% 1 Jacob Markstrom 28 1665:37:00 53 5 1.91 19 7 2 785 732 0.932 2 Joe Cannata 1 59:00:00 2 0 2.03 0 1 0 24 22 0.917 3 Pat Nagle 1 58:42:00 3 0 3.07 0 1 0 28 25 0.893 4 Joacim Eriksson 34 1975:43:00 86 0 2.61 17 10 5 920 834 0.907

The Transactions

Jacob

Markstrom was returned and then recalled

Joacim

Eriksson was recalled and then returned

Patrick

Kennedy was assigned to Kalamazoo

Jeremie

Blain was recalled to Utica

Joe Cannata was recalled back to Utica from Ontario (ECHL)

Frank Corrado was reassigned to Utica

Ben Hutton was signed to an ATO with the Utica Comets and will finish the season there before his entry level deal kicks in next season



The Schedule

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The Comets

have a busier schedule this week as they try and push to earn the 2nd

or 1st seed in the Western Conference. They play a back-to-back-to-back series

against teams who will be rested when facing them. Their opponents are all in the bottom half of

the league but both Rochester and Syracuse are very close geographically adding a

rivalry element to these games, especially against Syracuse. While the Comets have had success against

Rochester this year they haven’t seen that luck pay off against Syracuse.

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