Monsters lose finale, need help

The regular season is over for the Monsters. They will know by 11 p.m. April 15 whether they will be playing golf next week or still playing hockey.

The Manitoba Moose beat the Monsters, 1-0, on April 14 at The Q. It was a disappointing end to a glorious run that began nearly a month ago.

Now it all comes down to the game between the Charlotte Checkers and Chicago Wolves in Chicago. The Wolves have to beat Charlotte in regulation for the Monsters to make the playoffs. If the Checkers win, or even advance to overtime and lose, Charlotte will finish fourth in the Central Division and the Monsters will finish fifth — shut out of the playoffs a year after winning the Calder Cup.

“I think we just ran out of gas,” Coach John Madden said. “We’ve been on a run for some time now. We’ve been in must-win situations for 15 or 16 games. It was a good effort. What are you going to do? We lost two of our last 16 games.”

The game was scoreless after two periods, a sharp contrast from one night earlier when the Monsters and Moose were tied 4-4 after 40 minutes.

Instead of putting on a scoring show, players on both teams looked like they were auditioning for a pay-per-view bare-knuckles brawl.

The rough tactics favored the Moose, who had nothing to play for in the final game of the regular season. They were obviously honked off about squandering a 3-0 lead in the second period April 13.

The biggest brawl of the night broke out at 11:11 of the second period. Manitoba left wing Darren Kramer was on the Moose bench and started pounding Monsters center Jordan Maletta. Maletta was trapped on the wall in front of the Manitoba bench. Officials tried to pull Kramer off him, but Kramer just kept slamming his fist into Maletta’s head.

Kramer was given a fiveminute major penalty and a game misconduct. The result of the melee was a 5-on-3 power play for the Monsters. But 44 seconds after it began, the Monsters’ Zac Dalpe was called for high sticking, reducing the power play to 4-on-3.

The Monsters still had a 5-on-4 advantage after Dalpe’s penalty expired, but they could not cash in. It was frustrating because they scored three straight power play goals on the Moose in the second period one night earlier.

“If I had to point to one thing, I don’t think we took advantage of the seven minutes of penalties in the second period,” Madden said. “You look back at one thing all the time, that was it.”

The Monsters finish the regular season 39-29-4-4.

Madden said he will not watch or listen to the Charlotte-Chicago game.

“I’ll check in on Twitter every once in a while to see what’s going on,” he said.