Monsters Fall in Syracuse to the Crunch 6-3 to Drop to 21-19-4-1

Provided by The Monsters

The AHL’s Cleveland Monsters were defeated by the Syracuse Crunch on Saturday at Onondaga County War Memorial Arena in Syracuse, NY by a final score of 6-3. With the loss, the Monsters are now 21-19-4-1 overall this season and with 47 points, remain alone in fifth place in the AHL’s North Division standings.

Cleveland grabbed a 1-0 lead on Saturday with a Miles Koules even-strength strike at 6:20 of the first thanks to feeds from Sam Vigneault and Maxime Fortier.

The Monsters doubled their lead at 15:50 of the opening stanza when Vitaly Abramov polished off a point-blank marker on Ryan MacInnis’ lone five-on-five assist before the Crunch cut their deficit to 2-1 with a Cameron Gaunce power-play blast at 16:44.

In the middle frame, Syracuse rattled off three unanswered goals, from Taylor Raddysh at even-strength at 3:52, Gaunce at even-strength at 5:11 and Cal Foote on the power-play at 11:05, to grab a 4-2 advantage.

In the third, Carter Verhaeghe pushed the Crunch’s lead to 5-2 with an even-strength finish at 6:54 before Cleveland’s Koules potted his second five-on-five conversion of the contest at 10:03 to make it 5-3. Syracuse captain Gabriel Dumont capped the scoring with an empty-net finish at 17:25 to seal a 6-3 Crunch victory.

Monsters goaltender Jean-Francois Berube stopped 24 of the 29 shots he faced to fall to 13-14-3 this season while Syracuse’s Connor Ingram improved to 12-5-0 in net following a 30-save performance.

Next up for the Monsters, it’s a Tuesday road clash vs. the Charlotte Checkers with full coverage, live from Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, NC, underway at 7:00 pm.