Monsters beat Rockford in season opener THE SCORE

Quicken Loans Arena is in the midst of a transformation and in their season opener at the new-look Q, the Monsters began what they hope is a transformation to a playoff hockey team.

The Monsters were aggressive from the first puck drop and went on to drill the Rockford Ice Hogs, 4-1, in their season opener on Oct. 5 before 10,775.

John-Francois Berube, a 27-year-old goalie with experience playing for the New Yok Islanders and Chicago Blackhawks in the NHL, stopped 24 shots.

The Ice Hogs had only MONSTERS 4, ROCKFORD 1

six shots on goal in the first period, but at least five of them were quality shots.

“It wasn’t pretty at times, but that’s to be expected,” Monsters coach John Madden said. “I thought J.F. (Berube) played extremely well for us. He made some big stops. I think five of the first six shot on net in the first period were scoring chances. A couple of them were Grade A. If he doesn’t make those saves, we probably don’t get out of the first period.”

Rockford scored the only goal of the first period. The Monsters evened the score in the second period when Zac Dalpe dug the puck out of scrum behind the net and flicked it to Eric Robinson, who beat Rockford goalie Kevin Lankinen from in front of the crease.

The Monsters scored three times in the third period. Kevin Stenlund scored on a laser shot from the right circle 3:26 into the third period to break the 1-1 tie. Vitaly Abramov made it 3-1 on a blast at 15:14 and then Justin Scott finished it off with an empty netter when the puck rolled on its side from one end of the ice to the other.

“With the group of guys we have, we want to be aggressive,” Madden said. “We battled when things weren’t going well. We competed in the defensive zone. We competed all over the ice.”

This is the 12th season for the Monsters in Cleveland. They won the Calder Cup in 2016, but missed the playoffs the last two years. They made the playoffs only one other time before the Calder Cup year.

“We want to be competitive,” Madden said when asked about team goals. “We want to make the playoffs. We want to be a team that’s hard to play against. We want to have a good penalty kill and a good power play. We want to be known as a team that’s hard to score against.”

The Monsters checked most of those boxes in the opener. They face the Ice Hogs again at 1 p.m. Oct. 6 at The Q.