Phantoms Season on Brink After Blowout Loss to Marlies in Game 3

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

Slowly but surely in Game 3 on Wednesday night, it all started to unravel for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.

The Toronto Marlies took an early lead off a turnover, but leads had changed hands quickly in the first two games of the series.

Toronto's stifling defense completely shut down the Phantoms, as the Marlies piled on with two goals in the second and two goals in the third to take Game 3 by a score of 5-0 at PPL Center, taking a 3-0 series lead.

The Marlies opened the scoring at just 1:01 of the first period off a Phantoms turnover. Travis Sanheim tried to drop a pass behind the net to Phil Myers, but coughed it up to Andreas Johnsson. Johnsson slid a quick pass to Carl Grundstrom, who buried a shot into the wide open net to make it 1-0.

The 1-0 score held through 20 minutes with the Marlies leading in shots, 11-3, even with two power-play chances for the Phantoms.

Johnsson got on the board at 4:50 of the second period, as his centering pass hit the skate of Cole Bardreau and then went off the skate of a sprawling Alex Lyon and went in.

The Phantoms continued to struggle to get any momentum going in the offensive zone and that allowed the Marlies to sustain pressure throughout the period. Mason Marchment picked up the second goal of the period for the Marlies, getting his own rebound with 7:28 left in the second.

Shots were 22-9 Toronto after 40 minutes.

Things unraveled for the Phantoms in the third. They managed just five shots in the period, mainly because they were forced to kill off seven minutes of penalty time.

After successfully killing a slashing penalty to Myers, Lyon was assessed a match penalty for kicking Marchment in the crease, resulting in ejection from the game. Dustin Tokarski came in for the remaining 10:19.

On the five-minute power play for Toronto, Ben Smith scored a pair of goals to extend the Marlies lead to 5-0.

Mikhail Vorobyev was also assessed a 10-minute misconduct in the last seven minutes of the game.

Lyon made 23 saves on 26 shots before exiting. Tokarski stopped six shots. For Garret Sparks, it was an easy 16-save shutout.

The loss puts the Phantoms on the brink of elimination, down 3-0 in the series. Game 4 is on Friday night from PPL Center at 7:05 p.m.