Tonight is a fresh start for the North Division regular-season champion Toronto Marlies.
Utica comes calling in Game 1 of the teams’ division semifinal series tonight at Coca-Cola Coliseum, 11 days after the Marlies concluded their regular season on a positive note with a 7-2 rout of visiting Belleville.
But that win came after a month-long slide in which Toronto went 1-8-2-1 between Mar. 17 and Apr. 15.
With the lengthy break that came with earning a first-round bye, the Marlies have been able to put some distance between themselves and that difficult path to the end of the regular season. Toronto took some time off before slowly ramping up the practice intensity.
“Throughout the week we’ve been trending in the right direction with our intensity, our energy, our spirit,” Marlies head coach Greg Moore said to the team website. “We don’t want to ease our way into the game.”
Marlies captain Logan Shaw has seen that pace in practice as the Marlies prepared for Utica. The Comets arrived in Toronto on their own upbeat note after sweeping Laval in a best-of-three first-round match-up.
“I thought from the first couple of days, we kind of started slow,” Shaw told the team website on Wednesday. “The last five days we amped it up. Everyone’s competing. I think it’s been an awesome atmosphere.
“It’s a playoff-like atmosphere right now. I’m happy with how we’ve been working, how we’ve been practicing.”
Shaw is in his 10th pro season, and has played nearly 250 games in the NHL — including 15 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. But he admits that he will still have nerves stepping on the ice tonight.
“It’s okay to have the butterflies,” Shaw said. “This is 10 years for me, and I’m still going to have the butterflies. It’s a good thing. It means you care. It means you want to win.”
― Patrick Williams
