Utah Grizzlies: Falcons crush lethargic Grizzlies
"They wanted it more than us. When you come out and the other team wants it more than you, the result is going to be like that nine times out of 10," said forward Rob Sirianni, who scored Utah's only goal with :26 left to keep Fresno netminder Jake Moreland from blanking Utah for six straight periods, including his 3-0 shutout in the E Center on Wednesday.
"You can't cheat the game," Sirianni added about a Grizzly team that played without emotion.
"We had guys just kind of getting through it tonight, and this is playoff hockey," said Utah coach Jason Christie, charging that his players were standing around so much they couldn't generate many scoring chances. They did have some — several nice passes through Moreland's crease, but they went unconnected.
Sirianni took little comfort in having scored on a long rebound but could see some value in it. "It was important to get a goal just for our confidence, knowing that we could score," he said. "We had a lot of chances, and he's just kind of shelled us.
Most of the time, Utah couldn't hang onto the puck for more than a second or two before a Falcon was either taking it away or at least disrupting what the Grizzlies were attempting to do.
"Our biggest thing is being strong with pucks," Christie said. "We're just giving pucks away. There's no urgency in our game right now.
"They definitely beat us to pucks tonight. Our guys were just a couple steps behind. We couldn't generate no offense."
There'd better be some soon, even if Utah has played better on the road than at home this season.
Tonight will be the final home game of 2008 if the Grizz don't win the series. The game is at 7 in the E Center.
"It's still a 2-2 series, so we're back at square one, best-of-three now," said Sirianni. "We've just got to be a better team (tonight). Definitely, I think we're a better team than these guys.
"When you don't come with the right mindframe, with the right intentions, you can't just go through the motions. It's hard work, especially in the playoffs, and when you get outworked, you're not going to win."
It hardly looked that way Wednesday or Friday, though Utah won 6-1 and 4-3 in triple overtime at Fresno last Sunday and Monday.
Fresno's Oren Eizenman and Mike Ramsay each scored on first-period 2-on-1 rushes as the Grizz turned the puck over, and then Fresno worked in four more rebound goals. After the fourth score of the game, at 10:16 of the second period, Christie replaced goal Nathan Lawson with Mike Mole, seeing his first rubber of the postseason, because, "It wasn't fair to him when guys aren't playing in front of him."
Christie had said after Wednesday's game that Fresno was a desperate team, down 0-2.
Now it's up to Utah to adopt that kind of attitude.
"We have to be that desperate team, be ready to go," Christie said.
E-mail: lham@desnews.com
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