Grand Rapids Griffins Beat Checkers 5-2 in Final Game Before All-Star Break

Sebastian Cossa withstood a heavy Charlotte assault and the Grand Rapids Griffins closed their pre-All-Star stretch with a 5-2 victory at Bojangles Coliseum. Grand Rapids built an early cushion, weathered a second-period surge by the Checkers and sealed the win with two late empty-net goals.

Alex Doucet opened the scoring for Grand Rapids, and Ondrej Becher added a back-door finish with 40 seconds left in the first period to send the Griffins to the intermission up 2-1. Antti Tuomisto then extended the lead in the second on the power play; it was Tuomisto’s seventh goal of the season and was described as the game-winner. Charlotte cut the deficit to one before the third when Riese Gaber converted an all-hustle effort to make it 3-2 heading to the final period.

“The Checkers made a late charge and came ever so close to tying the game in the third period, but the Grand Rapids Griffins ultimately held on to prevail 5-2 on Saturday,” one game account noted, and the margin was preserved largely because of Cossa’s performance. Cossa finished with 38 saves for his 20th win of the campaign and the club credited him with a 20-4-2 record. His most dramatic stop came 2:40 into the third when Jake Livingstone’s shot trickled behind the netminder and “he reached back to pull it off the goal line with his stick.”

Special teams and timely finishing defined the outcome. Grand Rapids went 3-for-3 on its league-leading penalty kill, limiting Charlotte’s opportunities even as the Checkers out-shot the visitors 40-21 for the game and 34-13 over the last two periods. Offensively, the Griffins got playmaking from Austin Watson and Shai Buium, who “each bagged a pair of assists,” and the late-game sequence finished with empty-netters from Nate Danielson and Sheldon Dries to close out the scoring. “Nate Danielson popped in the first of two empty-netters with 1:45 on the clock, followed by Sheldon Dries 63 seconds later, who flipped the puck in from the neutral zone to claim the 5-2 win.”

Not every sequence went Charlotte’s way; Robert Mastrosimone appeared to put home a rebound that could have tied the game, but officials “had lost sight of the puck and blew the play dead prior to the conversion,” so the potential goal was not counted. Goaltender Kirill Gerasimyuk was pulled with 2:02 left as Charlotte sought the equalizer.

The victory carried milestone and record notes for Grand Rapids. Ian Mitchell skated in his 300th professional game, and the Griffins improved a noted streak to 26-0 when scoring the game’s first goal. The team site also reported a 35-7-2-1 ledger through 45 games and tied that start to a historic run, though a league matchup table listed a slightly different season record; that discrepancy will be one for official league stats to reconcile.

Grand Rapids heads into the All-Star break buoyed by a win and strong goaltending, while Charlotte returns to a six-game homestand after the break starting with a pair of games against Hartford. For fans, Cossa’s 38-save showing and the Griffins’ penalty killing will be the immediate talking points as both clubs regroup for the second half.