Coach upset after shutout loss

The Monsters played so poorly in a 4-0loss to Binghamton, their coach canceled an off day and ordered a practice, including film study, on Feb. 10.

Monsters players who made plans for what was going to be a day off on Feb. 10 have to cancel those plans.

Coach Mike Eaves was so frustrated about the way his team played Feb. 9 in a 4-0 loss to the Binghamton Devils at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse that he ordered practice the next day at OBM Arena in Strongsville. Film study of recent poor play will be a major emphasis of the get together.

It will not take long to learn if what Eaves has planned will produce results. The Monsters host Grand Rapids on Feb. 11 at the FieldHouse in a rare Tuesday game.

The Monsters beat Binghamton, 3-0, on Feb. 7, but Eaves was not happy with the way his team played in that game after taking a 2-0 lead. The loss Feb. 9 drops Cleveland, 22-23-2-2, back into last place in the AHL North.

“We’re not ourselves right now,” Eaves said. “Over the course of a long season, you go through stretches like this. We were going to have the day off tomorrow, but we need to come in. We need to come in and look at ourselves honestly and get back to our building blocks and start playing the way we’ve played all year.”

Eaves wants the Monsters to play faster. They seemed a stride slow in the 4-2 loss to Rochester on Feb. 5 in a game Eaves said was “a bad day at the office.”

“When we play well, we play fast,” Eaves said. “Playing fast involves going north and south, knowing what to do with the puck before you get it, being on the right side of people and having a shooter’s mentality. When we’re doing those things, we are who we are at the highest level.”

The Monsters had only five shots on goal in the first period for the second time in three games. They had 22 shots on net in total Feb. 9, and most were stopped easily by Devils goalie Gilles

Senn.

Things started going badly around 12:30 a.m. Feb. 9 when the AHL suspended Monsters center Derek Barach for the game with the Devils because of a cross-check he delivered on a Binghamton player in the Feb. 7 game, in which Barach scored two goals. No penalty was called on the cross check.

Defensive breakdowns cost the Monsters in the rematch. Adam Clendening, normally one of the Monsters’ best defensemen, was on the ice for all four Binghamton goals. The first, with 3:43 left in the first period, was scored off a pass that went under the blade of his stick. The second, an unassisted goal by Devils right win Nick Merkley, went off Clendening’s skate blade into the net.

“Breaks like that happen during the course of a game,” Eaves said. “You try to get back in the saddle. That goal was weird and the (third goal) one beside the net from a bad angle was weird, too.

“It’s an interesting statistic that 65 percent of teams that score the first goal win. It’s not that you can’t come back. The other night we got the lead and hung on. Veini (goaltender Veini Vehvilainen) kind of stole that game. Tonight we got behind and couldn’t get out of the hole.”

Vehvilainen made 20 saves in the 3-0 shutout victory. He made 38 stops in the 4-0 loss.

“We were going to have the day off tomorrow, but we need to come in. We need to come in and look at ourselves honestly and get back to our building blocks and start playing the way we’ve played all year.” — Monsters Coach Mike Eaves