Fort Wayne Komets Press Release

Komets sweep PrairieThunder in Opening Round
Next up: Rapid City

Fort Wayne, IN. -- The Komets eliminated the Bloomington PrairieThunder with a three-game sweep in the CHL Turner Conference Opening Round Wednesday night in Fort Wayne with a 6-3 win in front of 7,297 at the Memorial Coliseum.

Center Mathieu Curadeau scored his fourth of the post-season to put the Komets on the board first at 3:10 of the first period. Bloomington's Brodie Sheahan connected six minutes later at 9:10 to knot the game at 1-1 before the first intermission.

Bloomington grabbed it's first and only lead of the series 2-1 with Karl Fournier's first of the playoffs at 2:43 of the second. Komet defenseman Guy Dupuis beat PrairieThunder goaltender Brad Phillips at 13:09 to complete the second period scoring even at 2-2.

The Komets launched the third frame with goals by Artem Podshendyalov at 4:25 and Frankie DeAngelis at 6:34 before Jason Williams netted the Thunder's final tally 20 seconds later at 6:54. Kaleigh Schrock notched his first of the playoffs at 9:59 and winger P.C. Drouin hit the empty net with 14 seconds remaining to seal the Komets opening round victory 6-3.

Fort Wayne's Nick Boucher completed the first round stopping 18 of 21 shots for his third straight win while Bloomington's Phillips finished making 29 saves on 34 shots.

Rapid City, here we come -- Next up for the Komets is the Turner Conference Champion Rapid City Rush. Rapid City eliminated Dayton Tuesday night with a three-game sweep and will face the Komets next in the playoffs. The Rush will have home ice advantage after completing the regular season on top of the Turner Conference to gain first-seed advantage. Game dates for the Turner Conference best-of-five semifinal round between Fort Wayne and Rapid City are yet to be finalized.

All Komet playoff action can be heard on Fort Wayne radio WOWO AM 1190 with Bob Chase calling the play-by-play in his 58th season behind the Fort Wayne microphone and online at Xfinity KometCast.

Playoff tickets for the Komets' first home playoff game of the Turner Conference semifinal round are on sale at the Coliseum Ticket Office and online at TicketMaster.com. Season tickets for 2011-12 are also now on sale. For more information visit the Komet office, call 260-483-0011 or click here.

Komets.com -- The official website for the Fort Wayne Komets is www.komets.com. In addition to live gamecasts, the Komets' home on the web also features news, stats, interactive fan features and information as well as real-time scoring via the CHL and Pointstreak.