Checkers Start Season with 4-1 Win in Iowa
October 10, 2015 - American Hockey League (AHL)
Charlotte Checkers News Release
The Checkers got the 2015-16 season off to a flying start on Saturday, defeating the Iowa Wild 4-1 on Saturday thanks to a pair of goals by second-year forward Brock McGinn.
Rookie Sergey Tolchinsky and veteran T.J. Hensick also scored for Charlotte, which gave coach Mark Morris a win in his Checkers debut.
One of last season's top rookies and one of the final cuts from the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes this season, McGinn recorded the third multi-goal game of his career. Exactly two minutes after Tolchinsky scored the game's first goal just before the five-minute mark of the first period, McGinn netted his first on a breakaway after taking advantage of a broken stick by Iowa defenseman Mike Reilly.
After Iowa clawed one back on a power-play goal by Reilly as the Checkers ran into penalty trouble in the second period, McGinn then provided some breathing room midway through the third by blasting a shot from the top of the left circle off a nice feed from longtime Checkers scorer Zach Boychuk.
Hensick, a perennial top scorer in the AHL who was playing his first game for the Checkers, iced the game with a power-play goal in the final minutes of regulation.
Earlier in the game, Tolchinsky, an exciting offensive prospect who dazzled with an array of highlight-reel goals in junior hockey, had gotten the Checkers on the board by using his speed to get behind two Iowa defenders and out-wait diving goaltender Jeremy Smith for his first goal as a professional.
Defensemen Jaccob Slavin and Tyler Ganly assisted on that goal, making it a trio of first-year players who accounted for the Checkers' first goal of the season.
NOTES
McGinn, the Hurricanes' second-round draft pick in 2013, ranked third on the Checkers with 15 goals last season ... Morris now has 339 AHL victories ... Hensick finished in the top 10 in AHL scoring four times in the last five seasons ... The Checkers started on the road for the sixth time in their sixth AHL campaigns and are now 3-3-0 in season openers ... The Carolina Hurricanes assigned defenseman Danny Biega to Charlotte immediately following the game ... Iowa forwards Brett Sutter and Zac Dalpe rank third and fourth on the Checkers' all-time scoring list, respectively ... The Checkers and Wild face off again Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern. It will be the second of Charlotte's 10 consecutive road games to open the season.
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