GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Game 6 could be it.
The Grand Rapids Griffins only need one more win to claim the Calder Cup, and they’re hoping to get that Tuesday when they take on the Syracuse Crunch back at home.
The Griffins lead the best-of-seven Calder Cup Finals three games to two, having lost Games 3 and 5 in Syracuse. The Griffins are undefeated at Van Andel Arena this postseason — but so was the Crunch, up until last week.
“If you would have told me at the start of the year that we would be up three games to two with the hammer coming home with two cracks at it, I would be a pretty happy man,” head coach Todd Nelson said.
“Our home crowd has been great all playoffs,” forward Eric Tangradi said. “It’s somewhere where we’re comfortable, but we also know it’s going to take a man’s game, a full 60-minute effort — if not more — to finish this thing up.”
The Griffins will have to shore up some things that proved costly in Game 5, when the Crunch scored five times on goaltender Jared Coreau in the first period and went on to win 5-1.
But Coreau’s confidence isn’t shaken.
“I feel fine,” he said. “I mean, we’re all pros. You just have to flush it away. Those games are going to happen like that. You win as a team, you lose as a team, you regroup as a team.”
“Jared, he’s our No. 1 goalie for a reason. Games 1 and 2 he made some big saves where maybe we could have lost the game, but it was for him that we won,” his teammate Mitch Callahan, a forward, said. “Games like that happen. I don’t think that game was his fault. Structurally, defensively, we weren’t good.”
“It’s just one game,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t matter what the score was. The bottom line is the series is 3-2 in our favor. I like our chances.”
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