CINCINNATI -- Buoyed by team captain Nick Mazzolini, the usual stellar goaltending of Gerald Coleman and a rejuvenated power play, the Alaska Aces on Monday night seized the third ECHL Kelly Cup championship in the hockey club's 11 seasons on that minor-league circuit.
Mazzolini scored the game's opening goal and assisted on another, Coleman stopped 23 shots and the power play struck twice to snap a four-game drought.
All that added up to a 4-0 victory over the Cincinnati Cyclones at U.S. Bank Arena. The Aces captured the best-of-seven series in six games, winning two of the three games here on the banks of the Ohio River.
The Aces have won an unprecedented four straight Brabham Cups as regular-season champions -- no other team has won two straight in the league's 26 seasons -- and became the third team in league history with three postseason championships. They join the South Carolina Stingrays and Hampton Roads Admirals as the league's only three-time champs.
Alaska has won all three of its Kelly Cups on the road -- in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 2011, and in Gwinnett, Ga., in 2006. Alaska won both those finals in five games.
Mazzolini's 31 points in 21 playoff games are the fifth-most points in league history. He tied for the lead league with 11 goals and led the league with 19 assists.
Coleman and defenseman Kane Lafranchise are the only two current Aces who were on that 2011 team. Coleman secured 11 of Alaska's 12 playoff wins that spring. Lafranchise was a rookie who did not play in the playoffs, but was on the postseason roster. He since has blossomed into a player so good he spent most of the season in the American Hockey League.
Coleman's shutout was his second of the finals and sixth in his ECHL playoff career -- that's the second-most career bagels in league history.
The championship is the first for third-year Aces coach Rob Murray. Alaska won its previous titles under Brent Thompson (2011) and Davis Payne (2006).
One wonders where the Cyclones would have been without the startling work of goalie Rob Madore. Best guess -- on a tee box somewhere. Madore made 41 saves Monday and was named MVP in a vote of media and ECHL staff.
The Cyclones also were chasing a third championship. They hoisted hardware in 2010 and 2008.
The first three shifts of the game were indicative of Alaska's dominance throughout the opening 20 minutes. Each Aces forward line and defensive pairing generated a shot on goal on its first shift. Each Cyclones forward line and defensive pairing committed an icing on its first shift.
By period's end, the Aces owned a 21-6 cushion in shots. Consider too that one shot the Cyclones were credited with was actually a dump-in off the wall that Coleman covered when it came into his crease. Cincinnati iced the puck four times in the period.
The Aces finally cracked Madore on a power play in the last minute of the period, when Mazzolini used deception to his advantage. He approached from Madore's left while Brendan Connolly presented himself as an option between the hash marks and Peter Sivak made himself available to Madore's right.
Mazzolini eyed his teammates to get Madore thinking he might pass the puck and then roofed a short-side wrister over Madore's left shoulder for a 1-0 lead and his 11th goal of the playoffs. The center raced to the blue line, dropped to one knee and swept his right hand along the ice. So, he was kind of excited.
Mazzolini's goal snapped a string of 13 consecutive failed power plays by the Aces that dated back to Game 2.
The Aces pushed their lead to 2-0 late in the second period on a power-play, well, play that they have run throughout the playoffs -- it's a back-door play designed to get a defenseman a short-range shot against a goalie moving laterally.
This time, Brendan Connolly, stationed below the goal line on right wing, zipped a pass through the blue ice in Madore's crease and found Drew MacKenzie. MacKenzie buried his fifth goal of the playoffs, all of them on the power play.
Alex Belzile furnished breathing room with five minutes left when the Aces captured yet another Cincinnati turnover in the neutral zone. Belzile beat Madore with a wrister through the pads from the slot after Brett Findlay picked off a pass.
Turner Elson added an empty-net goal with three minutes to go. Connolly set that up with his second assist of the night, which was also his sixth in the last four games.
Find Doyle Woody's blog at adn.com/hockeyblog.