The American Hockey League team needs five points to clinch a spot in the postseason.
Brad Larsen will be only the fourth coach to lead the Springfield Falcons to a playoff berth.
SPRINGFIELD – Five. Mark it down. That’s the magic number the Springfield Falcons need to clinch a spot in the American Hockey League playoffs.
Playoffs? Yes, for the first time since 2003, the Falcons are playoff-bound. Clinching a spot is just a matter of ... five points.
This is how it works. The Falcons, leaders of AHL’s Northeast Division, upped their point total to 85 Thursday night, when they avoided a first-period KO and fought back to deck Bridgeport 5-4.
Based on the current point totals of other playoff hopefuls in the Eastern Conference, the most any of them can achieve is 89. Thus, the Falcons will clinch if they can reach 90, or if other teams run out of chances to reach 89. Clear?
Maybe not, but Falcons coach Brad Larsen doesn’t want to talk about it, anyway.
Like any coach in any league, all he cares about is his team’s next game, which comes Saturday night when the Connecticut Whale visit the MassMutual Center.
“I don’t get involved in magic numbers or what it’s going to take to get in (the playoffs),” Larsen said. “We really just reset and focus on the team that’s next on our schedule. Connecticut is hungry, they’re fighting for the playoffs and they’re a possible first round matchup for us.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position to hopefully clinch a playoff spot, but going in you want to be playing the right style, and make sure that we’re tapping into our details and feeding into our identity as a team.”
When the Falcons do clinch, Larsen will become only the fourth coach in the 19-year-history of the franchise to have a playoff team.
Kevin McCarthy’s Falcons made it to the playoffs in 1996 and 1997. His first team lost in the conference semifinals. His second lost in the finals.
Dave Farrish took over the job in 1997-98, and led three teams to the playoffs, each of which lost in the quarterfinal round. Springfield’s last playoff team, in 2003, was coached by Marty McSorley. His Falcons also lost in the quarterfinals.
This season has been quite a turnaround for Larsen, who spent the last two here as an assistant to Rob Riley. Those teams missed the playoffs, but now, Larsen has led a winner which has managed to stay on top despite numerous callups and injuries.
The fact that the Falcons have hung together, speaks well for the players and their coaches, and also speaks well of the newly-developed depth in the organization of their parent club, the Columbus Blue Jackets.
As the Falcons host the Whale, they can look back on a prosperous home stretch – 16 victories in 19 games since Dec. 30. Yes, but Larsen isn’t impressed with that, either.
“ You want to take care of business everywhere,” he said. “You can’t just win at home or on the road, you have to have balance. It’s really a game-to-game basis. I expect us to play the same on the road as we do at home.”
As for the Thursday comeback against Bridgeport, Larsen looks upon it as a learning experience for his team.
“You’re going to have to find different ways to win at different times. You have to learn how to play with a lead and hold it, you have to learn how to come from behind, and you have to learn how to come from behind in the third. You have to score on the power play and make sure the penalty kill is good.
“The regular season, if you look at it, is a chance to practice all those scenarios, and then the playoffs start and it’s real. Throughout the regular season I truly believe adversity is a great thing for a team. We went through a six-game skid there (March 8-17), and I liked what I saw in our dressing room, how we supported each other and continued to play hard.”
ICE CHIPS: Goaltender Paul Dainton remains day-to-day after an injury which took him out of Thursday’s game ... Fans at Saturday’s game will have an opportunity to win a bicycle, courtesy of Gus Coelho Auto Repair of Ludlow ... The Falcons stand 7-4-1-1 for March ... After Saturday, they have only three more home games, including Tuesday (April 2) when they will play Albany in a rescheduling of a Feb. 8 game that was snowed out ... The April schedule includes seven road games.
Garry Brown can be reached at geeman1918@yahoo.com