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PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Springfield Thunderbirds and Providence Bruins fought tooth and nail in another stingy contest, with the Bruins prevailing 2-1 in Game 2 of the Atlantic Division Semifinals on Sunday night inside Amica Mutual Pavilion. With that, the series shifts back to Springfield tied at one game apiece in the best-of-five set.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All of the scoring in the game came in a window of less than six minutes’ time in the opening period. For a fifth straight game in these playoffs, Springfield succumbed to a 1-0 deficit within the opening half of period one. Frederic Brunet geared a slapper toward Georgi Romanov, who made the initial save. However, the rebound bounced over to a waiting Matej Blumel on the right wing, and the 2024-25 AHL goal scoring leader rifled it into an empty cage to make it a 1-0 game at 8:34 of the opening perod.<\/p>\n
The T-Birds were granted a power play and an opportunity to tie the score quickly, and at 11:30, Dillon Dube did just that, parking himself along the left post and guiding a Hugh McGing pass behind Michael DiPietro to even the slate, 1-1.\u00a0 Alek Kaskimaki picked up his second assist in as many games to round out the scoring play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Bruins showed they, too, could answer in a hurry, as Brunet gathered a rolling puck along the right wing and geared a backhand pass across the slot to Georgii Merkulov, who beat Romanov with a quick release to put Providence ahead, 2-1, at 14:02.<\/p>\n
Providence outshot the T-Birds 25-14 over the first 40 minutes of the game, but both DiPietro and Romanov were taxed with special teams work in a second period that featured 10 minor penalties and eight combined power plays of varying lengths.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The T-Birds finally were able to give DiPietro a steady diet of scoring chances in the third, but the Springfield power play left two more opportunities on the table, going 0-for-6 in the final two frames after connecting on their first man advantage of the evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Springfield’s netminding and penalty killing did everything in its power to buy the offense time for an equalizer. Romanov, for a fourth straight contest, kept his opposition to two goals or less. The T-Birds’ backstop has now stopped 116 of 123 shots for a .943 save percentage in the Calder Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n
The series now shifts back to Springfield, as the T-Birds prepare to host their first game of these Calder Cup Playoffs on Tuesday night, May 5, at 7:05 p.m. at the MassMutual Center. Game 4 will follow on Thursday, May 7, with another scheduled 7:05 p.m. puck drop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thunderbirds’ Pay As We Play playoff plans are available now for no upfront cost and will still be in effect should the T-Birds advance to the next round. In addition, 2026-27\u00a0season tickets are available now – fans can order now by visiting www.SpringfieldThunderbirds.com<\/a> or by calling (413) 739-GOAL (4625).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Springfield Thunderbirds and Providence Bruins fought tooth and nail in another stingy contest, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,28972,267290,575,314031,314030,85,39407],"class_list":["post-648971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bruins","tag-dipietro","tag-nhl","tag-outduels","tag-romanov","tag-sports","tag-triumph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}