Two games have been played in the Turner Cup Finals, and it's still undecided whether the best team in the IHL is the Utah Grizzlies or the Orlando Solar Bears.
There's certainly no question which one is the luckier team at the moment, though.For the second straight game, the defending champion Grizzlies got the good breaks and took advantage of them as they defeated the first-year Solar Bears 4-3 in sudden-death overtime Tuesday night at the O-rena.
The Grizz looked dead on the ice with less than a minute to go in regulation. Then, with just 32 seconds left in the game and down by one goal, forward Scott Arniel was able to redirect a Chris Taylor slapshot into the net to tie the game at 3-all and force an extra period.
It took just 61 seconds into the sudden-death overtime for the Grizz to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven championship series. Left winger Andrey Vasiljev, who had scored Utah's first two goals, made a precise pass between two defenders to Yan Kaminsky who had broken loose from the Orlando defense. With no defensemen in sight, Kaminsky guided the puck into the corner of the net past Solar Bear goalie Allan Bester for the game-winning goal.
"It was a nice pass from Andrey. I took the puck and I saw that nobody was attacking me, so I took my time and focused on the shot," said Kaminsky after scoring his third goal of the playoffs.
"We feel very fortunate to win both of these games in overtime . . . Lady Luck was really smiling on us," said Utah coach Butch Goring, whose team won 3-2 in sudden-death overtime in Game 1. "They say if you work hard the breaks will go your way, so we must be working hard because it went our way."
The Solar Bears must be wondering what they did to upset Lady Luck, because she's yet to even look their way it seems.
Orlando appeared to have the game in the bag with just over six minutes left, but a goal by Bob Joyce was disallowed because the back of the net had been lifted in the air while his shot went in. The goal would have given the Solar Bears a 4-2 lead, which considering how the two teams were playing at that juncture would have been an insurmountable deficit for the Grizz to overcome. Orlando coach Curt Fraser disagreed with the refs call, but didn't think that was what cost them the game.
"It's unfortunate but that had nothing to do with it. We were still up 3-2 and we got in the last minute and we made a poor clearing attempt which was intercepted," Fraser said. "You can't give a team like Utah any opportunities or they'll capitalize on them and they showed that tonight."
"We just got a second chance and we made the most of it," said Arniel, who's tied with Vasiljev for the team lead in playoff goals-scored with 10.
The Grizz dominated play for the first half of the game. Using a pressure defense and their patented tight-checking, they held the potent Orlando offense to just 10 shots in the first 30 minutes of play.
On the other end, Vasiljev scored once in the first on a breakaway assisted by Kaminsky and then at the beginning of the second after he made a nifty stick fake to get around a defenseman.
Mark Beaufait, Dave Barr and Hubie McDonough all answered with consecutive goals for the Solar Bears as they came out and played much better toward the end of the second and for most of the third period.
GAME NOTES: Action will now move to the Delta Center for games on Thursday, Saturday and if necessary next Tuesday . . . Tommy Salo earned the victory in the net by making 24 of 27 saves . . . The attendance was 11,964.