Moose edge Admirals 2-1, end playoff drought with series win

Domenic DiVincentiis turned Manitoba’s long postseason drought into a breakthrough night. The 31-save effort carried the Moose past the Milwaukee Admirals 2-1 in Game 3 at Canada Life Centre, and with it came Manitoba’s first playoff series win since the spring of 2018.

The Moose did it the hard way, by surviving consecutive one-goal games and then hanging on through a tense final period. Walker Duehr opened the scoring 11:43 into the game when he worked in from the right-wing half wall to the faceoff circle and snapped a shot past Matt Murray for his first goal of the series. Manitoba built on that start late in the second period, when David Gustafsson, fresh off scoring the Game 2 winner in the final minute, won a loose puck behind the Milwaukee net and fed Samuel Fagemo for a 2-0 lead with 4:22 left in the period.

Milwaukee answered in the third and made the last stretch uncomfortable. Jake Lucchini finished a back-door pass from Jordan Oesterle to trim the lead to 2-1, and the Admirals kept pressing from there. But DiVincentiis kept finding the stops Manitoba needed, and the Moose protected the crease well enough to close out the series and advance to the best-of-five Central Division semifinals against the Grand Rapids Griffins.

The numbers underscored how decisive DiVincentiis was over the full series. He stopped 50 of 52 shots over his two starts, the kind of short-series goaltending that can swing an entire playoff bracket. Murray finished with 28 saves and allowed five goals on 108 shots in the series, which reflected how often Milwaukee generated looks without quite getting enough behind Manitoba’s netminder. Drew MacIntyre, Manitoba’s goaltending coach, had viewed DiVincentiis as ready for the pressure, and the 21-year-old answered with the kind of poise that can reshape a playoff run.

For the Moose, the result carried historical weight beyond one tight game. Their last series win before this came in the 2018 Central Division semifinals, when Manitoba knocked off Grand Rapids in Game 5 on April 30, 2018, 5-1, with Brendan Lemieux contributing a goal and two assists and Eric Comrie making 34 saves. Seven years later, after outlasting Milwaukee in back-to-back 2-1 wins, Manitoba finally has another series victory and a chance to build on it. Milwaukee’s season ended Sunday, while the Moose moved deeper into a bracket they now have a reason to believe they can keep surviving.