with files from Patrick Williams
Day 4 of the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs is a busy one, with two teams opening the division semifinal round and five others trying to finish sweeps to get there.
As effusive in his compliments as Rochester Americans head coach Michael Leone was ending the regular season, he had a much different message after his team’s 5-0 loss to Toronto in Game 1 on Wednesday.
Earning this trip to the Calder Cup Playoffs required the Amerks to go to overtime of their 72nd and final regular-season game.
“A lot of guys, especially older guys, have to look themselves in the mirror,” Leone said Wednesday night after his team dropped its sixth straight decision.
Last season’s Amerks went the distance in the division finals before finally falling to Laval. But this is a different roster, and Leone wants the experience that Rochester does possess to assert itself more. He said that he saw too many “self-inflicted wounds” against a strong Marlies team.
“The young kids could only do so much, but we need more out of some older players, for sure. More effort, more compete. It’s just one game (but) if we don’t compete, and we don’t have good habits and details, we have no chance to win the series. If we think we’re going to out-skill that team, we’re playing in the wrong series.”
Leone allowed that his team might be running low emotionally after last Sunday’s high. But managing those emotions is every bit as much a part of the developmental process as any other part of the game. And true or not, there is little time for an off night.
“This is playoffs. You’ve got to be more engaged in the battle and be ready to go.”
The Marlies, for their part, were ready from the jump in Game 1. They scored three times in the opening period, and Vinni Lettieri led the way to victory with three goals and an assist.
Lettieri has been one of the AHL’s most consistent point producers for years. When he hasn’t been in the NHL (he has 155 games at that level), he has been some at or close to a point-per-game average in an AHL career that began full-time with the Hartford Wolf Pack in 2017. This season, his first in Toronto, he managed a solid 42 points (14 goals, 28 assists) in 55 games.
Toronto’s top line, with Lettieri on the right side skating with captain Logan Shaw and Bo Groulx, can cause havoc. The trio was on the ice for four Marlies goals, including two power-play markers.
“They set me up for success throughout the year,” Lettieri stressed. “I can’t say enough about them, how great they are, and how they just come to work every single day.”
Game 2 is tonight in Rochester.
Bojangles Coliseum has been a house of horrors for the Springfield Thunderbirds of late. They’ll need to turn it around tonight in order to prolong their 2025-26 season.
In mid-January, Springfield headed down to Charlotte and lost by identical 8-2 scores on back-to-back days. That effectively led to a coaching change, with Steve Ott replacing Steve Konowalchuk on Jan. 19.
Under Ott, the Thunderbirds rode a second-half surge into the playoffs, going 16-8-2-0 after the All-Star break and setting up a first-round series…in Charlotte.
The Checkers rolled in Game 1. Through 20 minutes, the score was 4-0 and the shots on goal total was 15-2 in Charlotte’s favor. It was 7-0 before the midway point of the second period. By night’s end, the Thunderbirds were on the wrong end of an 8-1 final.
That’s Charlotte 24, Springfield 5 in their last three visits.
But the Checkers also know the series is far from over.
“It for sure gives some guys some confidence,” said forward Noah Gregor, who scored twice in the opening period of Game 1. “(But) it’s very unlikely that we’re going to have more games like this. Everyone is good in this league, and I’d be shocked if Springfield doesn’t come out and have a better effort on Friday.”
Jack Studnicka led the offense with two goals and two assists on Wednesday. Cooper Black made 18 saves in his playoff debut.
“Obviously we’ve got to take care of business because there’s a team across the way that doesn’t want their season to end,” Black said. “We’ve just got to keep a level head going into next game and make sure we play our game.”
Outscored 16-1 in their final three regular-season games, the Milwaukee Admirals turned things around quickly with a 4-1 win on Wednesday night, putting themselves in a position to eliminate Manitoba with another victory in Winnipeg tonight.
“The regular season didn’t end up the way we wanted,” Admirals goaltender Matt Murray said.
The Admirals have been a perennial contender under head coach Karl Taylor, including trips to the conference finals in 2023 and 2024. But this wasn’t a typical Milwaukee season. They finished fifth in the Central Division, and at 32-33-4-3 they were below .500 for the first time since their inaugural AHL season of 2001-02.
But what matters is that the Admirals got into the Calder Cup Playoffs. Now they can make the regular season a means to another playoff run. Milwaukee has won at least one series in each postseason since 2022; they are the only team in the AHL that can claim that.
On Wednesday, the Admirals struck quickly, opening up a 2-0 lead by the 12:09 mark of the first period. Brady Martin, the fifth overall pick in last year’s NHL Draft, scored his first professional goal. And Murray stopped 42 of 43 shots on the night, showing much of what earned him a Second Team AHL All-Star nod in 2024-25.
He called Game 1 a “prove-it statement game for us.”
“We’re capable, and we’re here to fight.”
Ryan Craig knows what a playoff atmosphere feels like, looks like and sounds like.
Craig captained the Lake Erie Monsters to the 2016 Calder Cup championship, when they stuffed 19,665 fans into their home building for Game 4 of the Calder Cup Finals, a Cup-clinching 1-0 overtime victory. And he was on the bench as an assistant coach when the parent Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in 2023.
Henderson’s head coach came away impressed on Wednesday by the Silver Knights faithful, who cheered his team on to a Game 1 victory in the first playoff game ever at Lee’s Family Forum.
“I thought the atmosphere was great,” Craig said after the 5-4 overtime win. “We’d like to try to build on it. I think it’s part of what makes this place a great place for us to play, what can make it a hard place for other teams to play.”
Henderson has shown resilience all season, and they were dominant down the stretch with a league-best 21-4-1-3 record after the All-Star break. On Wednesday, they erased a 3-1 deficit, and then rebounded from coughing up a 4-3 third-period lead to win on rookie Trevor Connelly’s goal 38 seconds into OT. Connelly added two assists for a three-point night, and Raphael Lavoie scored twice for the Silver Knights. Carl Lindbom allowed four goals on 22 shots, but still improved to 19-0-2 in his last 21 decisions.
Oliver Wahlstrom recorded three assists in the loss for the Barracuda.
Colorado handled San Diego, 3-0, on Wednesday night, putting the Eagles in position to advance with another win at Blue Arena tonight.
T.J. Tynan, Tristen Nielsen and Taylor Makar provided the scoring for Colorado in Game 1. Tynan’s goal was his first power-play tally all season. Nielsen, who recorded nine points in 24 games during Abbotsford’s Calder Cup postseason last year, also notched an assist on Wednesday.
Trent Miner made 18 saves for his first Calder Cup Playoff shutout. Miner is 6-4 with a 1.94 GAA and a .929 save percentage in 10 appearances over the last two postseasons for Colorado.
“Colorado played a heck of a game,” Gulls head coach Matt McIlvane said. “There were moments of the game where we were getting to the way that we wanted to play. But there’s opportunity for us to play better, certainly both with and without the puck, and that’s what we’ll be searching for.”
Damian Clara stopped 24 of 26 shots in net for San Diego. It was the first playoff appearance for the 21-year-old Clara, Anaheim’s second-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft and an Olympian with Italy at the 2026 Games in Milan Cortina.
“He was great,” McIlvane said of his netminder. “He certainly gave us an opportunity to win.”
While the first round nears its conclusion, the division semifinals get underway tonight as Syracuse visits Cleveland for Game 1 of their best-of-five series. The Monsters will host the first two games before the remainder of the series is played in Syracuse.
The Crunch and Monsters split their four meetings during the regular season, with each team winning twice at home.
Cleveland lost five straight games to end March – including back-to-back losses to the Crunch on Mar. 21-22 – but went 4-1-0-2 to close out the regular season and secure third place in the North Division.
Syracuse forward Jakob Pelletier won the league scoring title in 2025-26 with 77 points, and Dylan Duke tied for third with 32 goals on the year. The Monsters were led offensively by Luca Del Bel Belluz with 58 points in 55 games.