Marlies beat Penguins 5-1, move within one win of Calder Cup Finals

Toronto stopped treating the Eastern Conference Finals like a coin flip on Friday night. Bo Groulx broke a 1-1 tie on the power play late in the second period, Easton Cowan and Logan Shaw struck early in the third, and the Marlies rolled past Wilkes-Barre/Scranton 5-1 at Coca-Cola Coliseum to move within one win of the Calder Cup Finals.

The win gave Toronto a 3-2 series lead and flipped the pressure squarely onto the Penguins, who now face elimination in Game 6 on Sunday in Wilkes-Barre at 6:05 p.m. EDT. If the series reaches a seventh game, it returns to Toronto on Tuesday, June 9, at 7:05 p.m. EDT. After all the back-and-forth that has defined this matchup, the Marlies have positioned themselves to close it out on the road.

This series has rarely stayed with the home side for long. Toronto opened with two tight wins in Pennsylvania, including Michael Pezzetta’s late Game 1 winner and his overtime winner in Game 2, then watched Wilkes-Barre/Scranton answer with a 5-3 win in Game 3 and a 4-3 comeback in Game 4 capped by Rutger McGroarty’s late goal. Friday was the Marlies’ cleanest response yet: no panic, no late scramble, and no repeat of the one-goal chaos that had followed the series from night to night.

Groulx supplied the turning point at 14:21 of the second period, finishing a power play set up by Easton Cowan and Vinni Lettieri. Toronto made that advantage count, going 1-for-3 with the extra skater, and then buried the game before Wilkes-Barre/Scranton could reset. Cowan scored at 2:57 of the third period off William Villeneuve and Logan Shaw, and Shaw added another at 4:13 with Henry Thrun and Groulx collecting assists. Marshall Rifai finished it with a short-handed empty-net goal at 16:26.

The shot count barely moved the way of either side, with both teams landing 33 shots, but Toronto’s finishing was ruthless and its depth showed up all over the score sheet. Villeneuve’s assist on Cowan’s goal was his 14th of the postseason, another sign of how many layers John Gruden can lean on when the stakes rise.

The Marlies are now one win from their first trip to the Calder Cup Finals since 2017-18, a run that would send a franchise founded in St. Catharines in 1982 and moved to Toronto in 2005-06 back to the league’s last round. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, back in the conference finals for the first time since 2014, now has to save its season against a Toronto team that has already shown it can answer every swing.