Monsters outlast Crunch in triple overtime, clinch North Division semifinal

Zach Aston-Reese finally broke Syracuse’s resistance 7:53 into the third overtime, lifting the Cleveland Monsters to a 2-1 win Sunday and sending them into the North Division final with a 3-1 series victory. After nearly 48 minutes of overtime hockey, Cleveland’s latest playoff grind became the longest game in both franchises’ histories and the longest postseason game ever played by the Monsters.

The winning sequence started with Brendan Gaunce pushing the rush into open ice and ended with Aston-Reese finishing the play, with rookie defenseman Luca Marrelli also involved. Marrelli’s night carried extra weight beyond the assist, as he scored his first pro playoff goal for Cleveland in a game that demanded every ounce of composure the Monsters had left.

What stood out most deep into the night was the goaltending. Brandon Halverson kept Syracuse alive with 56 saves, including 33 in sudden-death overtime, while Zach Sawchenko answered with 46 stops for Cleveland and blanked the Crunch over the final 101:18. Matteo Pietroniro gave Syracuse the opening goal, but the Crunch could not solve Sawchenko again after that, even as the game stretched into a third overtime and the ice tilted toward survival more than structure.

For Cleveland, the victory fit the profile of a team that has been built for these moments. The Monsters finished third in the AHL North Division, earned a first-round bye and are in the playoffs for the third straight season under head coach Trent Vogelhuber. They entered the postseason as the Columbus Blue Jackets’ affiliate, with the memory of a Calder Cup championship in 2016 and an Eastern Conference final run two seasons ago still hanging over the room.

The series itself sharpened in Syracuse after a split north of the border, including a Game 3 overtime win on Friday, May 1. Game 4 was supposed to be the last stop before the bracket shifted, and now Cleveland will host Game 1 of the North Division final on May 14 at Rocket Arena against either Toronto or Laval.

The Monsters have done this kind of thing before. In May 2024, Owen Sillinger scored in double overtime against Belleville in front of 12,659 fans, then the largest AHL postseason crowd since Cleveland’s sold-out Calder Cup Finals game in 2016. Two years later, another marathon ended the same way for the Monsters, with endurance becoming the clearest measure of a team that kept its structure, its goaltending and its nerve when everything else was gone.