Devils halt Crunch win streak

3-1 Loss

Syracuse, NY – The Syracuse Crunch's eight-game win streak came to an end tonight when the Crunch fell to the Albany Devils 3-1 at the War Memorial Arena.

The Crunch are 34-15-2-4 overall and fall to 13-9-2-2 at the War Memorial. With 74 points the Crunch lead both the East Division and Eastern Conference.

Crunch netminder Cedrick Desjardins stopped 23 of 25 shots in the losing effort, while his Devils counterpart, Jeff Frazee blocked 37 of 38 shots.

Syracuse nearly opened the scoring early in the first period, but both defenseman Mark Barberio and forward Philip-Michael Devos hit the post within the first three minutes of the game.

After two scoreless periods Chris McKelvie gave the Devils a 1-0 lead when he put the rebound of an Alexander Urbom shot past Desjardins at the 9:04 mark of the third period. Just over a minute later Darcy Zajac extended the Devils lead to 2-0 with a shot from the slot that beat an out of position Desjardins.

Tyler Johnson fed Brett Connolly for the Crunch's lone goal with 2:15 to play in regulation. The goal was Connolly's 23^rd of the season.

Zajac added an empty net goal with 46 seconds to play to secure the 3-1 victory.

Crunchables: Cedrick Desjardins went over eight periods without allowing a goal at the War Memorial… Brett Connolly has points in 13 of the last 14 games and was awarded the AHL's player of the month award for February… With the assist, Johnson now has 54 points, good for the second most points in the AHL behind Grand Rapids' Gustav Nyquist with 55… This was just the second time in the last nine games where Syracuse failed to score first.

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