First-round win earns home ice for Macon in SPHL semifinals

All season long, the Macon Mayhem scratched and clawed to get the home ice advantage for the SPHL President’s Cup Playoffs.

Now, after playing the entire first round on the road, they’ll get to take full advantage of the confines of the Macon Coliseum.

After outlasting Columbus to win their first-round best-of-three series 2-1 with Thursday’s 6-3 win, the Mayhem now move on to the semifinal round against Pensacola. The Ice Flyers, seeded seventh, are fresh off eliminating second-seeded Fayetteville with a two-game sweep.

The first game of the series is Wednesday in Pensacola before the action shifts back to the Macon Coliseum for the second game Friday with the third, if needed Saturday in Macon, as well. Both games Friday and Saturday will start at 7:35 p.m.

“Playoffs are a different animal. You play the whole season to take try to get the advantage of home ice advantage,” Mayhem head coach Kevin Kerr said. “But the playoffs are a totally different animal. It’s win or go home. Seeds to me don’t matter.”

The seeding for the playoffs didn’t seem to matter for Columbus in its series against Macon. The Cottonmouths pushed the Mayhem to the brink of elimination by winning the first game 1-0 with Macon keeping its season alive in the second game when Collin MacDonald’s score won the game for Macon by the same score.

MacDonald’s goal snapped a flaming hot streak by Columbus goalie Mavric Parks, who had stopped 100 shots on goal in a row in the first two games, including 52 in the first game alone. The second game was also the first time in the history of the SPHL playoffs that two teams were scoreless after three periods of play.

Macon finished things off Thursday, blowing the game open with four second-period goals to break a tie and go on to win 6-3.

“It was a great series. I thought we battled. The guys were pretty dejected after game one and firing 52 shots at Parks and coming up with nothing,” Kerr said. “I told them, ‘Guys, sometimes that’s how the playoffs are and not always fair,’ and that we had to go out and repeat and try the same things again. We got the opportunity to win it in overtime, and it was obviously a relief, and we got to continue the series.”

The Mayhem took control Thursday with a pair of goals by Jake Trask within the first six minutes of the second period, with the first one assisted by Stathis Soumelidis to finally break through against Parks.

“Getting to the net, getting to the crease and making life miserable for him, I think he started to get frustrated and the door kind of opened and we capitalized on our chances that we needed to,” Kerr said. “We felt after the second period being up 5-1, it would be hard for them to come back.”

The Mayhem continued to take over on the opposite end of the ice. Following a multi-player altercation on both sides, Mayhem goalie Jordan Ruby turned away an odd-man scoring chance by Columbus, keeping the Cottonmouths at bay and further keeping momentum in the Mayhem’s favor.

Goals by Dennis Sicard and Matt Summers finished off the third.

“We came out and dominated the game and got a couple of good breaks on some breakdowns they had,” Kerr said. “That’s the thing you have to take advantage of in the playoffs.”

Of course, if not for the play of Ruby, there would be been no game three for Macon and the Mayhem would have become the second top seed in the past three years to be knocked out of the SPHL playoffs in the first round.

“Jordan’s our guy. He was phenomenal, too,” Kerr said. “He faced some hard quality shots, scrambled and was very poised and confident and his rebound control was phenomenal and too away some second chances. He kept us in the series.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2017 at 6:07 PM with the headline "First-round win earns home ice for Macon in SPHL semifinals."