Marlies looking to beat the heat
Stars tout ice quality in steamy Texas on eve of Game 3 showdown
Hockey. In Texas. In June.
It’s going to be hot when the Toronto Marlies play the Texas Stars in Cedar Park, Texas, on Tuesday for Game 3 of the Calder Cup final.
“Wear your shorts, wear your sandals, it’ll be 105 Fahrenheit all week,” said Texas Stars coach Derek Laxdal, an ex-Maple Leaf. “But our guys at the HEB Center have done an excellent job with the ice all playoffs. It will be a loud place, I think it will be sold out on Tuesday.”
Both teams departed for the Lone Star State following the Stars’ 2-1 win Sunday that set the final at a game apiece with the next three games Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in suburban Austin.
The Marlies are trying to win the first Calder Cup in franchise history and coach Sheldon Keefe wanted to get his team acclimatized to the Texas heat as soon as possible while also getting used to the environs since this will be the Marlies’ first trip to Texas this season.
“Just get away, it’s a new hotel, a new city, a new arena, just get used to some things,” Keefe said prior to departure. “We felt getting there (as soon as possible) was the best thing for us to get everybody comfortable.”
The $55-million (U.S.) HEB Center opened in 2009 and seats about 8,000 for hockey. Players say the ice there will hold up better — thanks to its state-of-the-art technology — in the heat than it did at Ricoh Coliseum, where slushy and chippy conditions on the weekend slowed things down.
“The heat is not going to be an issue, it’s a really nice building,” said Marlies forward Chris Mueller, who played for the Stars and won a Calder Cup there in 2014. “It’s a newer building. They always have good ice. And the crowd is a great crowd. Their team feeds off it.”
The Marlies hope they can draw on their road success to put a dagger deep into the heart of Texas. The Marlies have won their last four road games in the playoffs — part of two series sweeps. They were also the AHL’s best road team with a 30-5-3 record away from Ricoh Coliseum, an astounding .829 points percentage.
“I just think we buy into our system every shift, the way we have to play, when we’re on the road,” said Mueller. “I don’t know if we’re more comfortable at home and let the game play in to us. When we’re on the road, we have a game-plan in place and we execute it from the first shift. We’re going to take that business-like mentality right down to Texas and play like we played all playoffs: Start strong and we should be fine.
“We have to play on the road like we have all year and all playoffs. We expect that. We expect to be much better. I don’t think to a man we’ve played our best yet. We’re excited to get back at it.”
The loss on Sunday ended a few streaks: The Marlies had won10 in a row — two shy of the AHL record for most consecutive wins in the same postseason — and had won every home playoff game. The Stars’ depth also appears to match the Marlies’ depth in a way Toronto’s Eastern Conference opponents hadn’t. It’s all added up to just a little bit of adversity, not seen since the first round when Utica took the Marlies to the five-game limit.
“You want to win every game,” said Mueller, “but that’s why it’s a seven-game series.”