Comets ‘embarrass’ Monsters in rout

A hockey coach can always pull his goalie and insert the backup netminder into the game if the starter isn’t sharp. He can’t pull all 11 forwards if they aren’t shooting the puck.

The Utica Comets launched 20 shots at Monsters starting goalie Jet Greaves and put two of them into the back of the net on Feb. 24 before the Monsters had five shots on goal and nothing on the scoreboard.

It got worse after that, much to the disappointment of the 9,447 fans inside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Utica built a 4-0 lead before the Monsters scored a goal and cruised to an easy 7-1 win. The Monsters had four shots on net the first period, 12 in the second and only two in the

THE SCORE COMETS 7, MONSTERS 1

third period.

“It was a no-show from a lot of our guys,” Coach Trent Vogelhuber said bluntly. “From certain individuals, it was about as bad as I’ve seen them play from a competitive standpoint. It was embarrassing in front of a pretty good crowd.

“Utica is a good hockey team. You don’t have to go any further than competitiveness and trying hard. They tried a lot harder than us tonight. When there is such a lopsided game like that, (effort) is all it is. The players just have to work harder.”

The last two minutes of the second period told the story of the entire game. Luka Burzan scored his first goal of the season when he brushed the puck past Utica goalie Nico Daws with 1:55 left in the period to cut the Comets lead to 4-1.

Any spark the Monsters might have gotten from Burzan’s tally was doused with a figurative firehose when the Comets added two more goals in the final 40 seconds of the second to take a 6-1 lead into the third period.

Nothing worked for the Monsters. The the lopsided final was all on them. There were no bad puck bounces that made the final score deceiving.

Vogelhuber pulled Greaves after the Comets took a 3-0 lead on shots Greaves normally would have stopped easily. The one that ended Greaves’ night was a bad angle shot from just above the goal line that snuck between the post and Greaves’ left pad. Vogelhuber made the switch to Pavel Cajan before Greaves became too shell-shocked to get back between the pipes for the game with the Griffins in Grand Rapids on Feb. 25.

“The best thing for us is to turn around and play tomorrow,” Vogelhuber said. “If the guys have pride like I think they do and hope they do, they’ll respond.”

The evening wasn’t a total dud for the fans. They cheered enthusiastically when Monsters left wing Brent Gallant pounded Utica’s Samuel Laberge in a fight.

Down 7-1 with three minutes to play, the message on the humongotron encouraged fans to break into the wave. The wave went around the arena about a half dozen times as though the Monsters were the team with a six-goal lead.