Adept at Adjustments: Phantoms' Gordon Knows Importance Of In-Series Adjustments

ALLENTOWN - The Lehigh Valley Phantoms return home down two games to none for Game Three of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Toronto Marlies Wednesday night at PPL Center.

The 2-0 deficit isn't insurmountable, but not easily achieved by any means. Teams leading a best-of-seven Calder Cup Playoff series 2-0 have won the series 90.1 percent of the time (219-24), but 24 teams have come back from the early series hole. The Phantoms, as well as the Rockford IceHogs in the Western Conference, will look to use their own home ice advantage to mount a comeback from the 0-2 series deficit.

Take into account what the Phantoms have been able to do as the series goes on - Lehigh Valley is 5-0 this postseason from Game Threes and further - and it's easy to see that some credit is deserved to the coaching staff as well. Their in-series adjustments have, more times than not, worked out well and turned the tides of the series.

"Some of them work. Some of them don't work. But you have to have some kind of game plan to counter things that you're not stopping," head coach Scott Gordon said when asked about the team's success in making adjustments during a series. "And then just be prepared for what the other team might do to try to stop what you're doing well too. So you have to look at it from both sides."

So, how did Gordon and the coaching staff handle the adjustments between Games Two and Three in their two previous playoff series against Providence and Charlotte?

"You get a chance to say, okay well the first game maybe we got by and it was something that we weren't really getting by with in the second game," Gordon began explaining. "Now you're going to take a look at it and say, alright, now that we have some consistency in knowing what they're doing, what do we do to counter that?"

Whether it has been extra work on face-offs or special teams, or even some changes made on the forechecks and breakouts - the adjustments the Phantoms have made during a series have paid off. After splitting the first two games in both of their first two playoff series, the Phantoms - having time to make some adjustments while the series shifted from one venue to another - outscored their opponents by a 20-7 margin in their five wins in the second half of both series.

"The way I look at it is, you're going to have success and you're going to have failures," head coach Scott Gordon said, who referenced some things he learned in his first coaching experience in the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs as an assistant coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs under then head coach Randy Carlyle. "Right away after the first game we lost, he was talking about what adjustments we need to make and then what adjustments are they going to make. And sure enough both sides are thinking it in those terms. And you try to stay one step ahead of the game."

Phantoms and Flyers fans should hope for a better fate than what the Maple Leafs endured - they won Game 2 but went on to lose the series in overtime in Game 7 - but Gordon learned valuable coaching experience from the situation and it's something he has proven to be very adept at.

After all, his in-series adjustments in this current postseason run have paid off to this point.