From the Eagles Desk: Out of the Playoffs Again

The Eagles continued their freefall in the standings this weekend taking 2 points from Tucson while the Roadrunners gained 3. The RR’s beat Iowa twice this week to move into the final playoff spot with everyone having 4 games left. Just a couple weeks ago the Eagles had a 7 point lead, now they’re down by one.

Injuries/Transactions

– Ty Lewis was assigned to the Grizzlies last Monday
– Mark Barberio was assigned to the Eagles on conditioning loan from the Avs. Returned to the Avs on Sunday.
– Shane Bowers signed his ELC with the Avalanche on Friday. He’s been practicing with the team all week
– Kevin Davis was assigned to Utah on Friday in a totally baffling move.
– Joe Cannata was called up for a few hours on Tuesday for reasons unknown.
– The Eagles signed another NCAA free agent, Sasha Larocque, to a try-out contract on Wednesday. Like Peter Tischke, he’s an older defensive defenseman from the Big10, this time from Ohio State.
– Kale Kessy was released from his PTO on Wednesday and signed to a standard AHL contract.

COL 4 – TUC 3

Goals: Joly (O’Connor, Dries), Toninato (O’Connor), Joly (O’Connor, Alt)
Shots: +34/-37
PP 0-5, PK 4-5 (sort of)

Lineup:

The Roadrunners scored on their 2nd shift of the game forcing the Eagles into catchup mode right away. Luckily they caught up and passed them with 3 straight goals. Unluckily they gave up 2 goals in the last 7 minutes, putting the game in serious doubt and giving Tucson a point. Scott Kosmachuk won it in the shootout so all was not lost here.

COL 2 – TUC 5

Goals: Joly, Toninato (Barberio, McCormick)
Shots: +29/-43
PP 0-5, PK 6-8

Lineup:

Once again an early RR’s goal put the Eagles on the defensive early and this time they never recovered. They were never in this game and put up little fight in the 3rd period. Penalties were the theme of the night with Colorado racking up 40 PIMs and giving away 8 power plays to Tucson. They drew plenty of calls themselves but with no hope of scoring on the power play it wasn’t much of a positive.

Breaking Down: Week 26

Summary

Goals: +5/-8

Scoring was slightly better than it has been over the past month but still lackluster. Two even strength goals per game is around the season average but they got no help from the power play and needed a shortie to keep pace on Friday night. Even strength defense was fine with only 3 true goals against with no advantage.

Shots: +63/-80 (44.1%)

Tucson is a pretty high-volume team like most in the Pacific but Colorado did a poor job with shot suppression all weekend. Lots of penalties especially in game 2 didn’t help but they were overmatched in their own zone constantly. The RR’s had a knack for drawing the D out of position then firing the puck into the center of the slot for dangerous chances.

Shot volume for the Eagles was average and wasn’t heavily skewed towards the defensemen although they were highly perimeter oriented as usual.

Shooting percentage: 7.9%
Save percentage: 90%
PDO: 97.9

Francouz’s save percentage has been dropping since the 9-game win streak. It’s only at 88.8% over the last 5 games but I’m not putting that all on him. There’s some natural regression in there, losing Kevin Davis because the staff don’t trust him hurts a bit, the defensive defensemen aren’t very effective at preventing quality chances in general, the team aren’t playing with a lead very often and so forth. Plenty to work on this week in practice but #1 has to be getting Frank back above the league average mark.

PP: 0-10 (1 SHG against)
PK: 10-13 (1 SHG for)

The Eagles haven’t scored on their last 14 power plays and have just one goal in their last 32 chances. That’s very bad. The PP was a net negative this weekend, scoring none and giving up a shortie. Opponents should feel free to commit infractions whenever needed because Colorado can’t make them pay.

The PK had an off weekend allowing 3 goals in 13 chances and another just as Barbs was stepping out of the box in game 1. That was the tying goal by the way and gave Tucson a point. Dominic Toninato got some of that back with a SHG but they can’t let this happen again. One key ingredient of a poor PK performance is penalty volume and the Eagles had plenty of that. They took 15 minors over the two games and added another 20 minutes in majors/misconducts. They’re back on top of the AHL in PIM/game, total PIM, minors, majors and game misconducts. A great question for the staff after the season would be whether it was worth it.

Individual

Michael Joly was your scoring star of the week with 3 of the Eagles 5 goals. Logan O’Connor had 3 assists and Dom Toninato had the other 2 goals. Shoutout to Scott Kosmachuk for the game-winner in the shootout on Friday.

Overview

With only 3 points gained over the last 5 games the Eagles have hit a wall. They still have 21 in their last 14 so this is just a bit of the universe evening things out a bit. Tucson is now back in the final playoff spot and San Diego beat San Jose last night to stay in 3rd. If either win out then Colorado will be eliminated. The Eagles magic number is 10 so if they win out then Tucson would have to lose one or the Gulls lose one plus a point. Let’s take a look at the final week for all three teams and size up their chances.

Eagles
Sat/Sun at Chicago. Colorado had a loss & OTL at home to begin the season.
Next Fri/Sat vs San Jose. Season series tied at 3-3.

It’s tough to imagine more than 2 or 3 points out of these matchups. Chicago is the top team in the conference and just got their starting goalie back from the NHL. They need 4 points to clinch the division so there’s plenty to play for. Saving grace is that they play Milwaukee on Friday night so they won’t be rested and Sunday will make a 3-in-3 for them. San Jose is a team the Eagles have played decently against this year but the last time they met the Barracudas killed them 9-0.

Roadrunners

Sun at Ontario. TUC up 3-2-2 in season series.
Weds at Bakersfield. 3-4 vs Condors
Next Fri/Sat vs San Diego. Tucson 5-1 vs Gulls this year.

On paper this is easy street for the RR’s. They’re 8-1-1 in their last 10 and have 2 opponents they should handle well. I would expect at least 3 out 4 wins here and they’ll probably end up in the 3rd spot in the Pacific.

Gulls

Fri vs Ontario. 7-3-1 on the season.
Weds vs San Jose. 6-3 vs the Cudas.
Next Fri/Sat vs Tucson. 1-4-1 vs Tucson.

The Gulls aren’t playing that great lately at 4-5-1 in their last 10 but did beat San Jose last night. They have some players with the Ducks right now who they’ll get back next week so they should be better than their recent record. If things run true to form they ought to end up with a couple wins and maybe a loser point in one of the Tucson games.

Projection

The Roadrunners and Gulls should be around 80 points with Tucson narrowly ahead on points or the tiebreaker. The Eagles could be eliminated before the final weekend and finish with around 75 points. Their best hope lies with one of TUC/SD choking and losing out and then accumulating enough points to pass one of them. Unlikely but it’s a shot. Second best hope is that those two play .500 and the Eagles play above their capabilities to clinch a spot.

One thing that’s been tough to watch here is some of the organizational moves that have put a damper on the Eagles scoring. Eight goals in the last 5 games flat out won’t do it and two reasons why are guys that aren’t in the lineup, Agozzino and Davis.

It’s been 8 days since Aggz dressed for the Avs. With 11 NHL games played he has to pass through waivers, which isn’t a concern as far as another team claiming him but the Avs are loathe to waive anyone for some reason. He’s supposedly a little banged up so perhaps that plays into it. Net effect: the guy they got specifically to score in the AHL is gone. It’s been well over 2 weeks since Davis dressed for an Eagles game and he was demoted to the ECHL last week. He has 15 points in 25 AHL games but that’s not enough for the coaching staff to put him in the lineup even though the team is scoring less than 2 goals per game at this point. Good luck trying to justify that, especially with dressing Sergei Boikov and his point every 7 games plus a hideous charging major that lost them a game vs Manitoba. If the Eagles miss out on the playoffs it’s going to be from lack of scoring and these two decisions are going to play a major part.

Next up

Four games left, two in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday then the final weekend at the BEC vs San Jose.

Thanks to the AHL for stats and standings and to the Colorado Eagles for the feature photo.