Home teams are just 1-4 so far during the division finals round, a trend that Coachella Valley will have to buck in order to gain a split before heading to Colorado.
The Firebirds host the Eagles in Game 2 tonight (10 ET, 
) after Trent Miner’s fourth shutout already this postseason helped Colorado to a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Miner (6-1, 0.95, .958) has begun each of the Eagles’ three playoff series this spring with a Game 1 shutout.
“They’re a good team, a deep team, but we also hurt ourselves a bit,” Firebirds forward John Hayden said. “We were a little tentative to start, and we know in these five-game series that that can’t happen.”
Jake O’Brien made his pro debut for the Firebirds in Game 1. The 18-year-old Toronto native was the eighth overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft by Seattle, and was the leading scorer for Brantford (OHL) with 93 points in 53 games this season.
“He’s a very cerebral offensive player,” head coach Derek Laxdal said. “I thought he showed well. He didn’t shrink in the moment. He did a really good job of hanging onto the puck and making some plays.”
Ronnie Attard, a scratch the previous two games for Colorado, opened the scoring on Wednesday. Daniil Gushchin and Bryan Yoon made their playoff debuts, as the Eagles were without Jack Ahcan (on recall to the parent Avalanche), Sean Behrens and captain Jayson Megna.
“It’s not easy staying ready, coming in and contributing,” Eagles head coach Mark Letestu said in his post-game remarks to his club. “That’s as good a road game as you can ask for.”
The Springfield Thunderbirds wrote another chapter in their storybook 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs last night, authoring a 4-3 overtime win in Wilkes-Barre to even the Atlantic Division finals at a game apiece.
Down 3-0 entering the third period – and after being shut out in Game 1 – Springfield got a shorthanded goal from Hugh McGing, two extra-attacker goals from Dillon Dube and the game-winner off a fluky bounce from Akil Thomas at 13:44 of the extra session.
“The recipe for the way we need to play, we saw it in the third and we saw it in overtime,” head coach Steve Ott said. “We’re a relentless team and we continue to hound. When you play the game the right way you get rewarded.”
Defenseman Calle Rosén, a Calder Cup champion with Toronto in 2018 and a member of the Thunderbirds team that went to the Finals in 2022, assisted on all three third-period goals in Game 2. Georgii Romanov allowed three goals in a game for the first time this postseason but still finished with 39 saves and improved to 4-0 in overtime.
“The first two periods our goaltender was excellent,” Ott said. “There’s things we can definitely clean up (but) we had a lot of great contributions from some guys that played some heavy minutes.”