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Milwaukee Musings: Ads Take One Step Forward, Two Back

Posted on by Eric D

The Admirals didn’t take much of a break during the holiday week, hosting Grand Rapids before traveling to Rockford for the weekend. Despite noticeable improvements, it was another losing stretch for Milwaukee, which finished the week with a 1-2-0 record.

17 games in, Milwaukee still sits last in the Central Division with a 0.324 win rate.

2021-22 Nashville Predators AHL/ECHL Stats

Quick Hits

  • Forward Michael McCarron has been reassigned and recalled to and from Milwaukee twice in the past week, returning to Milwaukee today
  • Forward Patrick Harper was placed on unconditional waivers for the purpose of contract termination
  • Defender Ben Harpur was sent to Milwaukee on a conditioning loan
  • Nashville acquired forward Kole Sherwood from the Ottawa Senators in exchange for future considerations/

Milwaukee Admirals (3) vs. Grand Rapids Griffins (6)

Debuting their new “faux back” jerseys—and a defense featuring Ben Harpur—the Admirals played one of their best, most complete games of the 2021-22 season. It wasn’t, however, enough for victory. Connor Ingram had an unlucky night in the net, giving up a few tough goals, but Milwaukee did fight back to tie the game at two and three late into the third period.

Despite a dominant couple of periods, Dominik Shine’s second of the night took the wind out of the Admirals’ sails with less than five minutes to play in regulation. The Admirals couldn’t respond, and Grand Rapids tacked on two empty-net markers.

Milwaukee Admirals (5) @ Rockford IceHogs (2)

On Friday, Milwaukee took on Rockford with a few lineup adjustments: Frederic Allard remained sidelined, Grant Mismash was taken out of the lineup, and Egor Afanasyev—who’s struggled to be impactful lately—was relegated to the fourth line.

Karl Taylor’s group came out firing, holding Rockford to just three first-period shots and scoring twice in the opening ten minutes. The third line of Anthony Richard, Michael McCarron, and Mathieu Olivier was impressive for the most part, contributing to three of the Ads’ five goals. Richard, in particular, was noticeable, but he collected just his first assist of the season. Before the year, I asked Taylor if it was a make-or-break season for the speedy forward, and he admitted that when a player starts collecting one-year contracts, that can speak for itself. There’s concern that Richard’s game has plateaued, and it’s clear he’s frustrated given his monkey-off-the-back celebration when scoring on Wednesday.

The Grimaldi-Glass-Schneider top line continued their dominance; Glass picked up his 13th assist in 16 games and had an overall solid performance on the way to a dominant 5-2 win:

Milwaukee Admirals (1) @ Rockford IceHogs (2)

For Sunday’s matinee action, Matt Luff gave the Admirals another hot start with a goal just 50 seconds into the contest. Connor Ingram turned in another solid, confident performance, enjoying games where he doesn’t have to face record-breaking shot totals; in the first and third periods, Rockford totaled just seven shots on net.

Ultimately, though, it was the penalty kill that stumbled for Milwaukee. Tied through two periods, Ingram couldn’t compensate for a Davies-Harpur pair that failed to clear the puck on an IceHogs power-play chance in the final frame.

The Week Ahead

  • Wednesday, December 1 vs. Rockford IceHogs
  • Friday, December 3 @ Cleveland Monsters
  • Saturday, December 4 @ Cleveland Monsters/

All statistics are courtesy of eliteprospects.com, theAHL.com, or manually tracked.

Talking Points