Checkers take commanding 2-0 series lead over Laval Rocket in AHL playoffs

The Charlotte Checkers are coming back to North Carolina with a chance to win the AHL’s Eastern Conference championship at home.

The Checkers followed the same script Thursday night in Game 2 of their Eastern finals series as they did in Wednesday’s Game 1.

And they got a similar result.

By stealing the momentum and largely negating the impact of Laval’s strong power play, Charlotte skated to a 5-2 victory and a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

The next three games of the series are scheduled for Charlotte, and the Checkers will need just two victories to gain a spot in the AHL’s Calder Cup finals.

Game 3 of the series is set for 4 p.m. Sunday at Bojangles Coliseum.

Charlotte has won six straight games, across three different playoff series, and has a 10-game unbeaten streak on the road.

“I didn’t know that,” Checkers coach Geordie Kinnear said of the road streak. “But we don’t look behind us. We look ahead.”

The Checkers didn’t start quite as explosively Thursday as in Game 1, when they scored two goals in the opening 10 minutes. But they got the only goal of the first period Thursday, a power-play score off the stick of defenseman Trevor Carrick, with 2:28 left in the session.

It was the start of a big night for Carrick, a 30-year-old veteran who was part of Charlotte’s run to the Calder Cup in 2019.

Carrick finished with a goal and two assists, and he played outstanding defense against a Laval team that had the AHL’s best record during the regular season.

“The power play goal got him started,” Kinnear said of Carrick. “He’s a big part of our group.”

The Checkers blew the game open in the second period, scoring three times.

The first goal, at the 5:11 mark, was a shorthanded tally by John Leonard, his fifth of the playoffs. He scored off an assist from Carrick.

It marked the second time in as many nights that Charlotte scored a shorthanded goal. In the first two games, they have outscored Laval 2-1 on the Rocket’s power plays.

Michael Benning and Will Lockwood added second-period goals, as Charlotte took a 4-0 lead.

After Lockwood’s score, with 4:55 left in the period, the Rocket pulled goalkeeper Cayden Primeau for Jacob Fowler.

“The second period won the game for us,” Kinnear said. “We played better than we did last night.”

The second-period surge took a chunk of energy out of the capacity crowd of 9,943 at Place Bell in Laval, a Montreal suburb.

Laval got on the scoreboard at the 6:00 mark of the third period, with Noel Hoefenmayer scoring, but Charlotte responded with a Riley Bezeau goal six minutes later.

The Rocket was the AHL’s most-penalized team during the regular season, and, as was the case Wednesday night, the closing minutes of Thursday’s game featured a big fight. It was charged enough that four players (two from each team) received 10-minute misconduct penalties for resuming the fight after it had been broken up.

Kinnear said the physical nature of the game was understandable.

“As you move up (in the playoffs), it gets more physical,” he said. “It was a very physical game tonight. Both teams had their big hits.”