Four Unanswered Lift Marlies to Overtime Victory

TOR 4 at WBS 3 - OT

Toronto battled back on Wednesday night with four unanswered goals, including the decisive marker in overtime from Travis Boyd, to complete the comeback against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in their first matchup of the season.

Toronto: B. Valis (5) (R. Tverberg, M. Barbolini), L. Shaw (3) (T. Boyd,W. Villeneuve), B. Groulx (3) (J. Quillan, C. Sharpe), T. Boyd (5) (J. Quillan)
Goaltender: A. Akhtyamov (26/29) W

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton: T. Broz (5) (A. McDonough, P. Kemp), A. Calvert(5) (D. Laatsch, F. Harding), B. Imama (1) (F. Harding, N. Renwick)
Goaltender: F. Larsson (19/23) OT/L    

ON THE SCORESHEET

• Borya Valis put the Marlies on the board at 1:57 of the third period. He has seven points (5 goals, 2 assists) in 10 games this season.
• Logan Shaw scored at 10:38 of the third period. He has five points (3 goals, 2 assists) in 10 games this season.
• Bo Groulx scored at 12:54 of the third period. He has six points (3 goals, 3 assists) in 10 games this season.
• Travis Boyd scored at 4:18 of overtime and earlier registered the primary assist on Shaw’s third period goal. This was Boyd’s third career AHL overtime goal and his 10^th career game-winning goal.
• Ryan Tverberg recorded the primary assist on Valis’ third period goal. He has three points (1 goal, 2 assists) in seven games this season.
• Matthew Barbolini had the secondary assist on Valis’ third period goal. He has four assists in seven games.
• William Villeneuve picked up the secondary assist on Shaw’s third period goal. He has six points (1 goal, 5 assists) in 10 games this season.
• Jacob Quillan recorded the primary assist on Groulx’s third period goal and the lone assist on Boyd’s overtime goal. This was his third multi-assist game of the season. He has 11 points (1 goal, 10 assists) in 10 games this season.
• Chas Sharpe had the secondary assist on Groulx’s third period goal. This was his first professional assist. He has two points (1 goal, 1 assist) in six games this season.
• Artur Akhtyamov stopped 26 of 29 shot she faced. He is 3-2-0-0 this season with a 2.98 goals against average and a 0.894 save percentage. This was his first overtime win of the season.

TEAM NOTES

• The Marlies went 1-for-1 on the penalty kill and 0-for-3 on the power play. Toronto is 2-3-0-0 when not scoring on the power play and 3-1-0-0 when not allowing a goal on the penalty kill.
• Wilkes-Barre/Scranton outshot Toronto 29-23. Travis Boyd and Vinni Lettieri led the Marlies with three shots on goal. Toronto is 4-3-0-0 when outshot by their opponent.
• The Marlies are 1-0-0-0against Atlantic Division opponents and are 1-0-0-0 against the Penguins.  
• Toronto is now on their annual road trip as the Royal Winter Fair takes place at Coca-Cola Coliseum. The club will play eight games on the road before returning home on Nov. 22 against Iowa.

POSTGAME QUOTES

HEAD COACH JOHN GRUDEN

On tonight’s game:
Obviously, no one liked our first 40 but for them to come out and execute the way they did that can really pull a team together at the end of the day, it can really build some momentum and it’s really good for the morale. Proud of the way we did it, it felt really good. Artie made some big saves there in overtime. It feels good, I’m not going to lie and the credit goes to our players who figured it out and came out and played extremely well in the last 20 minutes.

BO GROULX (1 GOAL)

On Artur Akhtyamov:

He was unreal the whole game. He made some really good saves at some key moments. Hats off to him. If he wasn’t or he didn’t make those saves at those moments, we’d be walking out of here with a loss. He’s been good. He’s been really good. You can see in practice, he’s battling. He’s battling every single day and it’s nice to see it getting paid off.

On what the team can learn from the comeback:
It’s really, really good for the team confidence, chemistry to come back from a 3-0 deficit especially in the third period. We can learn from those moments, from what we did wrong and what we did right. And I think today we’ve got to focus on the positives especially in the third period. The vibes were really high (at the end of the game) and I thought they were pretty high after the second even though we were down three-nothing. That’s what I like about this team, we’re never out of the fight. That’s what great teams are built with, discipline to stick with the game plan and a lot of character. I think we showed that tonight.

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