The North Division Final between the Cleveland Monsters and the Toronto Marlies is tied 2-2, and Game 5 is set for May 24 at Rocket Arena in Cleveland at 3:00 ET after Toronto forced a decisive return to Ohio with a 5-2 victory on Friday evening.
Monsters coach Trent Vogelhuber called the loss a product of avoidable mistakes. "We got off our script with some discipline early. We want to play five-on-five as much as possible," Vogelhuber said, underlining the issue Cleveland must fix before a winner-take-all battle at home.
The weight of Toronto’s Game 4 was unmistakable. Ryan Tverberg had two goals and an assist in the 5-2 win, and Artur Akhtyamov stopped 36 shots to keep Toronto alive. For the first time in the series the Marlies scored the game’s opening goal and led after the first period; they also went 2-for-5 on the power play, with Alex Nylander providing a power-play strike that punctuated Toronto’s special-teams success.
Coach John Gruden credited the lift his squad found late in the series. "They found their confidence," he said. "We’ve just got to bring it again. We’ve got to bottle that up and understand what was successful, make sure we’re ready to go." He pointed to depth and energy down the lineup: "Our fourth line – the Johnson-Pezzetta-Sim line – brought that energy and drew that penalty, and we were able to capitalize on the power play. It was a huge confidence boost for our group." Goaltending and the power play combined to tilt Game 4 toward Toronto and away from the Monsters’ blueprint.
Context matters: the winner of Game 5 will advance to face the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the Eastern Conference Finals. The stakes are especially high for Cleveland, which is trying to reach its second conference final in three years, and for Toronto, which is no stranger to late-series drama — the Marlies have reached the AHL final four on six occasions and last made it in 2019.
Toronto’s path here has had a survivalist feel. The Marlies have already won two winner-take-all games in these 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs — defeating Rochester at home in the first round and rallying past Laval on the road in the division semifinals — and this postseason has produced nine winner-take-all games, the most ever in a single Calder Cup postseason. That history frames Game 5 as more than a single contest; it is the latest test in a series defined by late drama.
There is friction beneath the surface, and it is exactly the kind of detail that will determine the winner. Vogelhuber acknowledged the tension plainly: "Give credit to a team that was desperate and a goalie that played really well." Artur Akhtyamov, who finished Game 4 with 36 saves, kept his own remarks concise and forward-looking: "It was a good win, but we have to have a short memory. We need to win one more game. We’re going to keep going." The Marlies’ recent history of surviving elimination games combined with Akhtyamov’s performance creates a momentum headache for Cleveland.
How the cleveland monsters respond to those specific pressures is the single most consequential question heading into Sunday: can they eliminate the penalties and turnovers that handed Toronto power-play time and give themselves a five-on-five game to leverage home ice and the chance to move on? Game 5 will answer that, and the winner moves on to take on Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the Eastern Conference Finals.
