Another week in the world of Blue Jackets prospects with two prospects moving on to the Conference Final and another playing what probably was his final CHL game ever.
Starting off in Springfield as always, the Falcons went 2-1 last week with the team and some players picking up some hardware. Starting off on Sunday, the Falcons were off to Portland for a game against the Pirates. With the Falcons picking up a 4-2 victory along with some help from the Providence Bruins, Springfield was the first AHL team to clinch its division winning the F.G. (Teddy) Oke Trophy for the first time since 1997-98.
Jake Hansen opened the scoring with his second pro goal when he took an Alex Aleardi pass from behind the net and fired a slapshot past Mike Lee. Jonathan Audy-Marchessault scored his 20th goal of the season when he intercepted a clearing attempt and snapped a wrist shot by Lee. Blake Parlett scored his first as a Falcon to make it 3-1 when he fired in a Sean Collins rebound off the boards. Collins would make it 4-1 when he took a Matthew Ford feed for his 11th of the season. Curtis McElhinney made 19 saves for his 28th win of the season.
Thursday, the Falcons would receive a new player and some would receive honors from the league. The player the Falcons received was top prospect Boone Jenner after his junior team, the Oshawa Generals, were eliminated from the playoffs. As for the awards, Nick Holden would win the IOA/American Specialty AHL Man of the Year award – an award for which every team in the AHL names a winner – for his work in the Springfield community. Later that day, it would be announced that Jonathan Audy-Marchessault and Curtis McElhinney were named first and second team all stars, with JAM being named to the first team and McElhinney to the second team.
Back to game action, on Friday night the Falcons travelled to Adirondack for a game with the Phantoms. David Savard would do most of the work on Trent Vogelhuber’s goal when he skated into the zone, circling around the net to find Trent in front who snapped it past Brian Boucher. After Jason Akeson scored, Nick Holden helped the Falcons regain the lead when he took a Spencer Machacek drop pass and blasted it past Boucher for his ninth of the season. Matt Konan would score in the third to make it 2-2. Machacek would score the game winner with only minutes remaining when he slipped in a Cody Goloubef rebound for his 14th of the season making him third with the Falcons. Allen York would win his 11th game of the season making 27 saves in the 3-2 win.
To close out the week, the Providence Bruins would help the Falcons who were playing their next to last home game. And it was a good thing too because after the pomp and circumstance of receiving their team and individual awards the Falcons would…lay a big old egg (sorry Falcon fans). The Falcons lost 2-0 being shutout at home for the first time all season. Curtis McElhinney made 35 saves in the game. McElhinney will need to win two of Springfield last four games to tie Scott Langkow’s record of most wins in one season. Leading the Falcons in scoring this week was Sean Collins with a goal and two assists, JAM, Jake Hansen, Nick Holden and Spencer Machacek all had a goal and an assist and David Savard had two assists.
Quickly in Greenville, Steven Delisle and the Road Warriors are down 3-1 to the Reading Royals with Steven having no points and 20 penalty minutes and one suspension. Steven earned 15 of his PIMs in game two when he earned a five minute major and a game misconduct for a cross checking penalty (must’ve been one heck of a cross check).
In the CHL playoffs, Gianluca Curcuruto‘s Plymouth Whalers moved onto the OHL Western Conference Finals with a 4-2 series win over Owen Sound. Unfortunately Gianluca hasn’t played since game two because of an injury. My Whalers source Whalers On The Moon (a Futurama reference) said all Gianluca told him was “head”.
Josh Anderson-London Knights (OHL)
Series Stats 5GP 0-1-1 +2 10PIM
Playoff Stats 9GP 1-1-2 +4 14PIM
Josh and the Knights faced off against rival Kitchener with the Knights picking up a 4-1 series win. Josh was pretty much kept off the score sheet picking up an assist in game two which was a 2-0 Knights win. For the assist, Josh got the puck to Chris Tierney who drove to the net and got hauled down but would find Max Domi in front. Domi, despite having a Rangers player on his back, scored his fourth of the playoffs. Josh and the Knights will take on Curcuruto and the Whalers for the right to play in the OHL Championship.
Boone Jenner-Oshawa Generals (OHL)
Round Stats 4GP 0-3-3 -4 2PIM
Final Playoff Stats 9GP 2-6-8 -1 8PIM
The three seed Generals would take on the two seed Barrie Colts with Barrie winning in four games. Boone picked up two assists in the 4-3 overtime loss. Boone’s first assist came when he stole the puck from a Colts player trying to leave the zone and then fired a shot making it 1-0. After that, Winnipeg Jets first round pick Mark Scheifele would make it 1-1 and then Bradley Latour would score a shorthanded goal to make it 2-1 when Scott Sabourin would deflect his point shot. The Colts scored two goals within 1:40 to tie it winning it 1:18 into overtime. Boone and pretty much every other General was held off the scoresheet in games two and three as the team would lose game two 4-1 and game three 4-0. In game four, Boone would pick up an assist in the Gen’s 4-2 loss. Boone’s assist came with the game already out of hand as the Gens were down 4-1 with only a minute left in the game. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened but, going off the video, I’m guessing Boone chipped it out and the loose puck would come to Scott Sabourin who blasted it past the Colts goalie. As I said above Boone was assigned to Springfield and these will probably be Boone’s last games in the O. Boone leaves Oshawa sitting 17th all-time in goals with 111, 17th in points with 246, and tied for 19th in assists with 135.
Quickly, due to a lack of substantive updates I could find, Joonas Korpisalo was with Finland’s J20 team at a Four Nations Tournament in Slovakia where Finland went 2-1 with Joonas taking a 5-3 loss to Russia in which he stopped 23 of 28.
There you have it folks! Another week in the world of Blue Jackets prospects. As for next week, we’ll have the Falcons final four regular season games along with an all-CBJ prospect matchup in the OHL’s Western Conference Final (road trip planning has sort of commenced).
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