Things did not go so well for the Cleveland Monsters in their 6-3 road loss to the Syracuse Crunch in a game that got out of hand in more ways than one.
Perhaps the Syracuse Crunch take their team name just a bit too literally. Maybe their interpretation of the word Crunch is related to instigating fights and unnecessary penalties, because that’s what happened Friday night. There were 19 penalties between the Monsters and Crunch in an ugly loss for Cleveland. Eight of the penalties were entirely related to one incident at the 11:15 mark in the 2nd period. This resulted in Bryan Moore and Brett Gallant no longer being able to participate in the game.
The unfortunate thing about the timing here is that Cleveland was down 3-1 at this point. Hypothetically if they had their full compliment of players things may have been a bit closer. Syracuse would go on to score there more goals after the 2nd period incident. Cleveland did manage to score two more times, but it was too little too late.
Markus Hannikainen scored twice for the Monsters and Branden Troock scored once. These were Hannikainen’s fifth and sixth goals on the year and Troock’s second since joining the Monsters on a PTO.
Veini Vehvilainen only faced 19 shots on the night, saving 14 of them. Allowing five goals is never great. The fact Vehvilainen allowed five goals on less than 20 shots is a bit more alarming than usual. Things are not going well for Vehvilainen at this moment in time as he has allowed 15 goals in his past four games. Cleveland head coach Mike Eaves might want to give Vehvilainen the night off on Saturday as they travel to Rochester to face the Americans.
