Eagles score four late, stun Wolves to even Western Finals
Colorado erased a 2-1 deficit with four goals in the final five minutes, stunning Chicago 5-2 and leveling the Western Finals at 1-1.
Colorado turned the Western Conference Finals on its head in a matter of minutes, scoring four times in the final five minutes to beat Chicago 5-2 and even the series at 1-1. Jacob MacDonald tied it with his first goal of the playoffs at 15:00 of the third period, T.J. Hughes put the Eagles ahead with 4:08 left, and Jason Polin and Ivan Ivan finished the comeback with empty-net goals.
What had looked like a Wolves road split became a full swing in Colorado’s favor. Chicago had taken Game 1, 3-2, on May 28 in Loveland, but Game 2 flipped late after Colorado’s tying goal and a Chicago high-sticking penalty by Nikita Pavlychev immediately after the equalizer. The Eagles scored twice in 52 seconds to close the night, a burst that matched the urgency of a team trying to push through its first-ever Calder Cup conference final.
The context made the turnaround even bigger. Chicago entered the Western Finals as the 2022 Calder Cup champion and had gone 3-1 on the road in the postseason before the series shifted. Colorado, meanwhile, was playing in a conference final for the first time and became the first Colorado Avalanche affiliate to reach the AHL final four since the Hershey Bears did it in 2001. For a team without that kind of deep playoff history, a comeback like this can change the entire tone of the round.
The Eastern Conference Finals had already put Toronto in command of another series. The Marlies beat Wilkes-Barre/Scranton 4-2 in Game 1 and followed with a 2-1 overtime win in Game 2 in Wilkes-Barre, leaving the Penguins down 2-0 after reaching the conference finals for the first time since back-to-back trips in 2013 and 2014. Toronto was back in the AHL’s final four for the seventh time and first since 2019, while only eight teams in league history have come back from losing the first two games of a best-of-seven at home.
The day also carried an international note with AHL ties. Konsta Helenius scored Finland’s gold-medal winner at 10:42 of overtime in a 1-0 victory over Switzerland at the IIHF World Championship final in Zurich. Finland captured its first world title since 2022 and its third in seven years, another reminder that the AHL’s influence stretches well beyond the Calder Cup bracket.
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