The 2026 Calder Cup Finals take place this afternoon (4 p.m. ET,
Sportsnet One), with the Chicago Wolves looking to bounce back from Friday’s 4-2 loss to the Toronto Marlies.
Vinny Lettieri (10-10-20) Mali scored two goals and one assist in the first game and scored the winning goal with 8:28 left in regulation time. Lettieri led the league in postseason scoring with 42 points in 55 regular season games.
Friday marked Toronto’s seventh come-from-behind victory in the playoffs. They were trailing 1-2 before Cedric Pare (4-6-10) With 49.7 seconds left in the second quarter, the two sides were tied. Ben Danford (1-2-3), the Maple Leafs’ first-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, scored his first career goal to erase a 1-0 first-round deficit.
Boria Wallis (0-3-3) and Bo Glucks (5-6-11) The two each had two assists.
“Sometimes we do really well and sometimes we make some mistakes that end up putting us in trouble,” said head coach Maris John Gruden explain. “In our first game, trying to get to know each other, I thought we did a lot of good things. We had some opportunistic scores. Obviously, our goalie is very big when we need him.
“The trial process is always part of the first game. We’ll clean things up, but now it’s all about winning. We won.”
Artur Akhtyamov (12-6, 2.12, .927), making his 16th consecutive start, had 26 saves in the first game. In 12 of those 16 games, he allowed two goals or fewer.
It was the Marlies’ fifth straight road win, starting with their fifth win in Cleveland to seal the conference finals series. Toronto also won five straight playoff games in 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2019.
Amir Miftakhov (2-1, 2.60, .926), Akhtyamov’s former teammate in his native Kazan, Russia, made his third consecutive start in place of the injured player Kayden Primo (8-6, 2.58, .919) and missed 21 shots in Game 1. Bradley Nadeau (6-9-15) and skyler blindlove (2-2-4) provides offense for Chicago.
“I thought it was a great 60 minutes overall. I thought we dictated the tempo and I thought we had most of our chances,” the Wolves boss said Spiros Anastas. “We made two big mistakes on their second and third goals that cost us, but other than that I don’t think we made a lot of progress.
“We have to learn from these mistakes… One of the mottos in our room is, there’s no winning or losing, there’s just winning and learning. We’ll learn from that.”
Quick click:
- In Calder Cup Finals history, the team that wins the first game has won the title 64 out of 87 times (73.6%).
- Only eight teams have ever lost Game 1 of the Finals at home and still won the series, but it’s happened three times in the past seven years — including Chicago’s win over Springfield in 2022.
- Both teams went 0-for-3 from the field on Friday night’s power play.
- Akhtyamov and Miftakhov join Peter Kochetkov (Chicago, 2022) as the only Russian goalkeeper to play in the Calder Cup final.
- Yannick Turcotte Made the Wolves’ playoff debut in the first game. It was his first game since March 28.
