with files from Patrick Williams
Day 7 of the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs is an off day as the remaining 16 teams prepare for a busy week ahead.
Three teams have won their best-of-three first-round series after losing Game 1. That’s only happened twice before in the first four years of the current Calder Cup Playoff format.
Manitoba and Coachella Valley both won Games 2 and 3 at home. Springfield, however, completed a comeback on the road — again after being blown out, 8-1, in Game 1.
The Thunderbirds became the first team in Calder Cup Playoff history to lose Game 1 by such a large margin and come back to win the series. And they came from behind in both Game 2 and Game 3 against a Checkers team that was 37-5-2-0 in the regular season when they scored the first goal of the game.
“Sometimes we could bend a little, but we never broke,” the Springfield coach Steve Ott said after Saturday’s Game 2 win. “That’s just a sign of a strong team.”
Manitoba picked up its second straight win 2-1 on Sunday to defeat the Milwaukee Admirals. Walker Duehr again Samuel Fagemo gave the case while Domenic DiVincentiis made 31 saves.
DiVincentiis stopped 50 of 52 shots he faced in his two starts (1.00, .962).
“He played both games well,” the head coach Mark Morrison said his sophomore netminder. “They (Milwaukee) are a team that plays a lot of net-front hockey and they’re big in front of him, and I thought he did a great job of fighting off traffic and killing plays where they didn’t get second and third chance rebounds.”
Morrison also credited his leadership for navigating the emotions of a tough playoff series.
“[They] they’ve all seen this before,” Morrison said. It’s an emotional game, and we’ve got enough guys now to just calm down and make sure they’re focused on what we’re trying to do.”
Like Springfield, Coachella Valley was on the wrong end of the Game 1 score. But unlike Springfield, the Firebirds had a chance to return home as they tried to turn the series in their favor.
A 6-2 win over Bakersfield last night sent Coachella Valley into the Pacific Division semifinals.
“We got better and better as the series went on,” the Firebirds head coach Derek Laxdal said. “Game 1, they used their building, it wasn’t a 6-1 game, that’s what sold our boys. [Game 2] we found a way to win. It was 4-2, they came back to 4-4, we scored from the start to win the game. That little difficulty encouraged us.”
Laxdal stayed with him Nikke Kokko in Game 3 — despite his .737 save percentage in the first two games — and the move paid off as the second-year pro stopped 31 shots, including all 15 he faced in the first period the Condors controlled.
“They had a good push in the first half, they beat us 15-5, they beat us 11-1… What about Nikke Kokko? He was outstanding.”
“When we won [Game 2]I knew we were going to win today,” Kokko said after Game 3. “For me, I always get better when I need to get better.”
After Game 3 on Sunday, Toronto forced Rochester to come from behind all game and eventually pulled out a 4-2 victory to advance to the North Division semifinals against Laval.
“We set the tone early,” the head coach John Gruden said. “We were doing a lot of things that should give us success. I thought we did a great job doing exactly what we wanted to do.”
Ryan Tverberg got 2:12 in the competition, Logan Shaw added two second-period goals, too Dennis Hildeby made 29 saves to keep the Amerks from completing a comeback.
“We have young guys playing like veterans right now,” Gruden said. “To win at any level, you need good senior players and good young players to mix and match. Our guys played with a lot of ease. I thought we were good in the third half and if not, Dennis was outstanding.”
The Rochester Americans’ series-ending loss to Toronto on Sunday also brought down the curtain Don Stevens‘ A 40-year career as a play-by-play broadcaster.
Stevens, who spent 58 years in broadcasting together, announced in the fall that this would be his last season behind the mic.
“Thank you, everybody,” Stevens said at the signing on Sunday. “I am blessed, in this life and in this job, to have what I had. I could not have asked for anything better.
“And forever in the future: Go, Amerks.”
