With a victory in the trip to Calder Cup final, Charlotte's pawns are a lot of joy these days.
That's why they intend to continue pushing and not relaxing at all as they play Game 4 against Laval tonight.
“Our guys did it all year round,” head coach Geordie Kinnear His team led the series with a 3-0 after Sunday's 5-1 win. “You can talk about it, but when you do it all year round, you know, as a group, I'm proud of the group's consistency. They do it all year round.”
The Florida Panthers have reached the Stanley Cup final, and the chess piece hopes to make the group the first since Pittsburgh and Wilkes Barry/Scranton in 2008, to reach the NHL and AHL championship games the same season.
The NHL organization won the Stanley Cup and Calder Cup last time in the same season? It was 1995, when the New Jersey Devil and Albany River Rat got out of the super rare feat.
Thirty years ago, Kinnear was the 21-year-old Albany defender. Now, he is in his 22nd season after the AHL bench, with eight of them being the head coaches with the highest prospects in Florida. Kinnear reached the conference finals as a player in 1997 and 1998 and was again as an assistant coach for Charlotte in 2011, but was still looking for a second Calder Cup title. He knows the elusive and difficult success of the playoffs.
So he expects the Rockets to have a fierce stance when saving their season tonight.
“It’s a very good team,” Kinnear said of Laval. “We have reduced our work.”
One game at a time. It's a common playoff, but the Rockets will start tonight with a smaller to-do list.
There is a lot of discussion about belief and the way to stay positive, but in fact, this belief can be difficult when facing a series of 3-0 deficits. So, Laval is rebuilding its goals. This isn't a game to a game. The Rockets lowered it to a gradual movement.
“Believe that the goal must be mastered,” the head coach said. Pascal Vincent After the third game, he said: “We are not going to focus on the four games we have to win. We attack again and again, and we will focus on the present moment.”
The Rockets did not move forward on Sunday Laurent Dauphininjured in the second game, defender Tyler Wotherspoon Missed his fifth straight win.
– with from Patrick Williams
