The Utica Comets (AHL) had two more games this past week. After winning the week’s first game, to extend their win streak to two, Utica was shutout by one of the best team’s in the league Saturday. Each of the Comets’ games featured a shutout, with Nico Daws posting the one for Utica on Friday. The Comets have their first three-game week of the season on deck.
For last week’s review click here.
Weekly Results
Comets 3, Senators 0; Nov. 7
In their first matchup of the season with Belleville, the Comets dominated and turned in by far their best performance of the season. Utica outshot the Senators 38-19 and really were not threatened too much during the contest.
Matyas Melovsky continued his strong start to the season with a power play goal later in the first period. Utica added their last two goals of the game in the second period. Calen Addison scored the first and Angus Crookshank the second. Notably, Shane Lachance finally picked up his first point of the season, coming on Crookshank’s tally.
Utica was a perfect 3-for-3 on the penalty kill while Daws was a perfect 19-for-19 in between the pipes. Despite the three goals, no Comets tallied multiple points. Instead, nine different Comets picked up a point. Edwards and Parent each tallied their fourth assist of the season.
Penguins 4, Comets 0; Nov. 8
It was a polar opposite game for Utica the next day on Saturday. The Comets were shutout 4-0 against one of the league’s best teams, and a Penguins team they beat just a week prior.
The Comets were limited to only 20 shots. Jakub Málek made another start and stopped 23-of-26. The Penguins scored one first period goal, two in the second period, and added an empty-net tally in the third for good measure. The Comets’ power play went 0-for-3 while the opponent’s went a perfect 1-for-1.
Statistic Update
The struggles of Lenni Hämeenaho and Shane Lachance have been a huge storyline early on. Hämeenaho is startlingly still scoreless through nine games. Lachance, who has looked much better through the eye test, finally picked up his first point of the season in the comets’ victory on Saturday. AHL Tracker‘s game score metric has Lachance at a 0.19 figure while Hämeenaho sits at 0.07. Both troublesome marks.
Nico Daws has been terrific for Utica thus far this season. Through four games, he has a 0.942 save percentage. This includes his 19-save shutout from Saturday. Daws’ AHL production throughout his career has largely been lackluster. For example, he posted a 0.892 save percentage across 34 games last season and had a 0.890 mark in 2023-24. However, thus far this season, he has been Utica’s best player on the nights he has played.
Standings Update
With the split, the Comets own a 2-7-1-0 record on the season. This places them in last place in the North Division and six points back of the final playoff spot. Utica’s five points is tied for the second-fewest in the AHL.
Upcoming Schedule
The Comets have their first three-game week coming up. They kick off the week on Tuesday evening at 5:00 pm ET against the Syracuse Crunch. Utica is then off until Friday and Saturday when they play the Belleville Senators and Providence Bruins on back-to-back nights. The game against Belleville is home while the Bruins game is in Providence.
Belleville and their 11 points currently occupies the final playoff spot in the North Division. Meanwhile, Providence owns the second-highest point total in the league and the Crunch the seventh-highest (8-4-0-0).