Throughout the entirety of the 60 minutes of regulation the Checkers never found themselves with a lead. Cleveland busted out of the gates with two goals in the first six minutes, but a pair of greasy goals from Patrick Brown and Tomas Jurco evened the score heading into the first intermission. The Monsters were outshot in the middle frame but came away with the period’s lone goal, pushing a puck over the line to regain their advantage through 40 minutes of play. Needing a win to keep their ground in a tight North Division playoff race, the Monsters attempted to lock things down in the third, but Julien Gauthier pulled the visitors back into a tie by splitting a pair of defenders and wiring a wrister top shelf midway through the frame to eventually force overtime.
The extra frame saw some key chances for both sides, but a strong defensive play by Charlotte turned into an odd-man rush for Nick Schilkey and Aleksi Saarela, with the former feeding a pass across and the latter rifling a shot past Cleveland netminder Brad Thiessen for his 30th goal of the season and the game winner.
Ale Nedeljkovic shook off Cleveland’s early success and turned in a strong performance, finishing the night with 25 saves, including several tough stops down the stretch of regulation and into overtime.
