The Western Conference Final is set: It’ll be Grand Rapids and San Jose after the Griffins finished off Chicago and the Barracuda took care of San Diego, both in five games. Troy Grosenick and San Jose shut out the Gulls 2-0, while Grand Rapids won 5-2 at Rosemont. The league notes in the schedule release (opening Saturday in San Jose) that it’s the first AHL conference final for a Sharks affiliate since they started sending kids to the AHL in 1996 in Kentucky.
Grand Rapids’ win finishes off the Thompson family for the spring, unless Kim latched on somewhere when I wasn’t paying attention. Tage finished 2-1-3 in 10 playoff games to go with 1-1-2 in 16 regular-season games for Chicago.
Back East, Steve Oleksy opened the scoring for Toronto, but the Crunch came back with five in a row to win 5-1 and take a 3-2 series lead. Game 6 is Monday in Toronto. The Providence-Hershey series resumes Sunday in Rhode Island before heading back to Hershey on Tuesday and, maybe, Wednesday.