Wolves stave off late 6-on-4 advantage to even series

Like in any good hockey playoff series, there needs to be a little bad blood.

The Chicago Wolves and Milwaukee Admirals showed they don't care much for each other Friday night when, in the pregame warmup, they came together at center ice and nearly exchanged blows.

There was plenty more nasty once the puck dropped, and in a game the Wolves needed badly, they rode goalie Ondrej Pavelec to a 2-1 victory to even the best-of-seven American Hockey League Calder Cup playoff series at 1-1.

The Wolves had to sweat out the final 1:48 by killing an iffy holding penalty on Jordan LaVallee. It became a 6-on-4 when Milwaukee pulled goalie Pekka Rinne, but the Wolves and Pavelec held on even with Colin Stuart playing without a stick.

"They had some good shots, but everybody played well when it was 6-on-4," said Pavelec. "It was a huge win."

Wolves coach John Anderson was anything but happy after the frantic finish, questioning referee Brian Pochmara for the call on LaVallee.

"You have to call a crappy hold?" Anderson said. "We got a sweater ripped off our back and they don't call that, then a guy comes down, gets a little tug and he calls that with two minutes left to go in a 2-1 hockey game. I just don't know what's a penalty anymore. I'll have to phone the league to find out."

Goaltenders Pavelec and Pekka Rinn were much of the show at Allstate Arena, combining to stop 62 of 65 shots.

The Wolves' Jesse Schultz broke a 1-1 tie when he took a sweet pass from Joe Motzko, busted in on Rinne and put the puck through the pads.

Schultz's goal came just 27 seconds after Milwaukee's John Laliberta had tied it.

"They scored, then when we scored 20 seconds later, that was huge for me," Pavelec said.

The Wolves took a 1-0 lead out of the first period thanks to Pavelec, who made 3 point-blank stops.

The Wolves peppered Rinne with 18 shots in the first period, beating him at 9:30 on a broken play when the puck squirted free to Kevin Doell with half the net open.

• The Wolves signed right wing Spencer Machacek to an amateur tryout contract. The 19-year-old Machacek was the 67th player taken in the 2007 draft by the Atlanta Thrashers.

• Milwaukee played without Josh Langfeld, who had a hat trick in Game 1. Langfeld was recalled by the Nashville Predators earlier in the day to play in Game 5 of their Stanley Cup playoff series at Detroit because of injuries to Jason Arnott and David Legwand.