Anything can happen in playoff hockey. \u00a0Despite losing six out of seven regular-season bouts against the Bakersfield Condors, the Firebirds were able to best them and take their best-of-three round one series.\u00a0 The Firebirds will move on to round two while the Condors start their summer break earlier than planned.<\/p>\n
After losing game one in Bakersfield, game two on April 25th was do-or-die, and the Firebirds did.\u00a0 Eduard \u0160al\u00e9 established an early lead ten minutes into the first period with a power play goal and the team held onto that lead until 12:03 in the third when the Condors tied the score at 4-4.\u00a0 Oscar Fisker M\u00f8lgaard put the bow on the contest at 16:50, bringing the score to 5-4.\u00a0 Coachella Valley\u2019s defense was able to hold the Condors off for the last three minutes for the victory.<\/p>\n
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Game Three Highlights via FloHockey, Courtesy of the AHL<\/p>\n
The teams returned to Acrisure Arena the next night for their final shot at round two.\u00a0 The first period was scoreless.\u00a0 The Condors threw everything they had at Firebirds\u2019 goaltender Nikke Kokko, but were not able to get one through.\u00a0 The period ended with a 15-5 shot differential in the Condors\u2019 favor.\u00a0 In the second, the Firebirds came out firing\u2014literally\u2014with 14-5 shots on goal.\u00a0 The difference? JR Avon, Jagger Firkus, Jacob Melanson, and Jani Nyman all found the back of the net, putting Coachella Valley up 4-0 by the end of the second.\u00a0 The Condors tried to rally in the 3rd period netting two goals in the first ten minutes, but the Firebirds were not having it.\u00a0 Logan Morrison put his second goal on the board and Oscar Fisker M\u00f8lgaard but an exclamation mark on the win at 17:24 when he filled the empty net.\u00a0 The Firebirds won 6-2.<\/p>\n
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Round 2 of the AHL playoffs is the Pacific Division Semifinals.\u00a0 The Firebirds are bracketed against the Ontario Reign, who were first in the division during regular season play.\u00a0 Throughout the regular season, the Firebirds and Reign met seven times: they lost four and won three of those battles.\u00a0 The winner of the 5-game semifinal series will advance to the Pacific Division Finals. <\/p>\n
April 29th in Ontario, California will be the setting for game one, followed by game two on May 1st.\u00a0 The Firebirds will return home for game three on May 5th.\u00a0 If needed, game four will be at Acrisure Arena on May 7th, and game five back in Ontario on May 9th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anything can happen in playoff hockey. \u00a0Despite losing six out of seven regular-season bouts against the Bakersfield Condors,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[4095,5,43661,32022,29669,4188,4262,4,853,6763,2686,234,5318],"class_list":["post-560870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seattle-kraken","tag-bakersfield-condors","tag-hockey","tag-jacob-melanson","tag-jagger-firkus","tag-jani-nyman","tag-kraken","tag-losing-game","tag-nhl","tag-ontario-reign","tag-oscar-fisker-molgaard","tag-seattle","tag-seattle-kraken","tag-seattlekraken"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116477036063082339","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}