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Abel to Yzerman

Video- Grand Rapids Griffins With A 6-1 Home Opener Win

10/16/2021 at 12:29am EDT

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Six different Grand Rapids Griffins lit the lamp and five enjoyed two-point nights on Friday as the home team roared to its largest-ever victory in a Van Andel Arena opener, defeating the Rockford IceHogs 6-1 before a capacity crowd of 10,834.

Chase Pearson, Tyler Spezia and Dennis Yan each tallied a goal and an assist while both reigning AHL Defenseman of the Year Ryan Murphy and rookie Kirill Tyutyayev chipped in a pair of helpers, leading Grand Rapids to a win for the fifth time in its last six home debuts.

Joe Veleno scored the first goal of the 2021-22 campaign on the power play with 12:12 remaining in the opening period off Murphy’s first assist as a Griffin, but Josiah Slavin answered for Rockford at the 14:52 mark with the only goal Calvin Pickard would surrender on the night, sending it to intermission tied 1-1.

Tyutyayev notched his first point in North America by setting up Spezia’s go-ahead tally 3:14 into the second, before goals by Turner Elson at 4:20 and Hayden Verbeek at 17:11 pushed Grand Rapids’ lead to three heading into the final 20 minutes. Elson’s marker gave him 100 points (41-59--100) for his Griffins career.

A Pearson power play goal at 4:25 of the third made it a 5-1 game, and Yan wrapped up the scoring by beating Malcolm Subban with 6:58 remaining.

Game highlights are below.

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that.

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