Toronto Marlies coach Greg Gilbert says his team doesn’t need any significant corrections following a 4-1 loss to the Chicago Wolves in Friday’s opener of the American Hockey League Western Conference final.He’ll settle for better execution and fewer penalties as the Marlies hope to stay competitive in what could be a gruelling best-of-seven series. And they’ll also need to find a way to stop Chicago’s Jason Krog.
The Wolves centre and league MVP scored a game-winning goal in the second period and added two late goals to close with a hat trick in front of 3,821 fans at suburban Allstate Arena.
“We did more things to hurt ourselves than we did to help ourselves,” said Gilbert. “Everything we talked about (doing) we didn’t do. There’s nothing to correct. It’s stuff that we’ve done since day one. We didn’t execute.”
It could have been worse. The Marlies were penalized nine times on Friday, but Chicago was only able to convert on one power play.
That came early in the second period as defenceman Darren Haydar broke a scoreless tie. With the teams playing four-on-four, Haydar took a feed from Krog and weaved from left to right and fired a slap shot past Marlies goalie Scott Clemmensen.
Krog made it 2-0 at the 7:15 mark when he picked up a ricochet off teammate Joe Motzko and angled a short shot by Clemmensen for a 2-0 lead.
The Marlies replied 23 seconds later as defender Patrick Wellar scooped up a rebound of his own shot and skipped the puck past Wolves goalie Ondrej Pavelec to slice the deficit in half.
Krog added two insurance goals for Chicago late in the game. The first came with 2:07 left in regulation and he added an empty-netter with 40 seconds remaining.
