Anyone who has ever spoken at any length with Texas Stars head coach Neil Graham can vouch for his calm, even-handed approach.
Going down 2-0 in the opening 10:57 to a powerful Milwaukee Admirals club last night did not rattle Graham. It was an unnerving start, but conversely, he wasn’t taking any bows after Texas flipped the game around and rallied to hammer out a 6-3 win.
For those who believe that a hockey team takes on the personality of its coaching staff, the Stars would surely be good evidence of that.
“Take the first one, bank it, and reset very quickly,” Graham told reporters following the victory. “We knew we weren’t playing to our standard. We needed to just take a breath and get back to what we wanted to accomplish.”
Once they found that standard, the results followed. The Stars scored six of the game’s last seven goals, breaking open a 3-3 tie with three goals in the third period.
“I think it was important to show the pushback,” Graham added.
Just back from a stint in Dallas, regular-season AHL MVP and scoring champion Mavrik Bourque returned in time to pocket a goal and three assists in the Game 1 win. And Lian Bichsel, reassigned earlier in the week after finishing his season with Rögle BK of the Swedish Hockey League, stepped into the lineup for his Calder Cup Playoff debut. Bourque (2020) and Bichsel (2022) were both first-round draft picks by Dallas.
It wound up in a losing effort, but Devon Levi’s 60-save performance for the Rochester Americans in a double-overtime defeat at Syracuse last night was nothing new for the rookie netminder.
Levi, who won the Mike Richter Award as the outstanding goaltender in men’s college hockey in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, led the NCAA with a .933 save percentage as a senior at Northeastern University last season. He owns a share of the program record for saves in a game – also 60 – accomplished in a 3-1 win over UConn on Feb. 25, 2022.
Levi owns a .940 save percentage through the first three games of the Amerks’ series with the Crunch. With a .927 mark in the regular season, he ranked second in the league behind only Hershey’s Hunter Shepard.
― with files from Patrick Williams
