Milwaukee, WI–Matt Murray was a superstar in net with 35 saves for his second shutout of the season as the Admirals earned a shutout win against division-leading Grand Rapids on Friday night at Panther Arena.
Chase De Leo also had a big game, scoring his first goal as an Admiral and dishing out an assist, to pace the team’s offense. It was also the 500th AHL game for the speedy winger.
After a quite first period, Ozzy Wiesblatt opened up the scoring with his 11th goal of the season at 6:16 of the second. The play started when Kieffer Bellows carried the puck deep into the Griffins zone and passed the puck to O’Reilly on the left post. With all the Grand Rapids defenders attention on O’Reilly, he threaded a pass to Wiesblatt, who had a wide open net to open the scoring.
About 2 minutes later Jake Livingstone let a shot rip from the point and De Leo redirected the puck over Griffins goalie Sebastian Cossa’s glove to double the lead
The Ads pushed their lead to 3-0 13:42 in the third period, when De Leo found Ryder Rolston on a breakaway and scores five-hole for his eighth goal of the year.
Murray and the Milwaukee defense locked it down the rest of the way to improve their record to 22-15-3-4 on the season and 51 points. Coming off his first All-Star appearance, Murry collected his 14th victory of the season.
The Admirals are back in action tomorrow at 6 pm at Panther Arena as they look to get another win against the division leading Griffins.
