Utah Grizzlies open series today

WEST VALLEY CITY — Before things get started tonight at 8 MDT in the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas in the ECHL National Conference Finals, the Utah Grizzlies can do nothing but admit the conference regular-season-champion Wranglers "have had their way" with Utah this season. Those are coach Jason Christie's words, and they are true.

The Grizzlies won their first game against Las Vegas and haven't won in the 10 games since, going 1-7-1-2 for the 2007-08 year with the Wranglers. Six of them were one-goal games.

But the Grizzlies, 8-3 in the first two rounds of the ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs, just like the Wranglers — who had a 47-13-5-7 season for 106 points to Utah's 32-30-2-8 record worth 74 points — are full of confidence going into this series.

In most of the games they played against Las Vegas they were short-handed, said veteran defenseman Ian Forbes. Now their injured are back, as are those who played in AHL Bridgeport, and they feel whole.

"Playoff hockey is a whole new season. No one expected us to beat Fresno and Victoria," said Forbes of the first two series Utah won against teams seeded much higher than the Grizzlies.

Rookie defenseman Jeff Dwyer notes that Vegas plays a style similar to what Victoria did offensively, almost a European way of playing by passing the puck rather than the dump-and-chase game a lot of teams used. Utah frustrated Victoria's passing and rushes, disrupting them in the neutral zone. Dwyer said Las Vegas is better at it, but he thinks Utah can still cope.

The Grizzlies have been better on the road than at home much of the season and won Game 1 of both of their previous playoff series on the road. The Grizzlies won at Fresno 6-1 in Game 1 and at Victoria 6-0 in Game 1. It is 4-1 in road playoff games so far, and the Utah power play leads the ECHL in the playoffs at 25.9 percent efficiency.

Also, the Grizzlies are getting what Dwyer calls "awesome" goaltending from Mike Mole (3-0) and Nathan Lawson (5-3). They have three playoff shutouts between them, and Mole leads the ECHL for players with more than one game with a 1.95 goals-against average.

And maybe Utah's most important trait is that, even though it had its share of players moving back and forth from Utah to the AHL Sound Tigers over the season, the team seems to have remarkable cohesion. The players all get along on the ice and off.