Chirps from Center Ice

I have said all along that if you were looking for analysis from me on the team look elsewhere. That said, here is who impressed me in WBS jerseys tonight in a 7-6 shootout loss to the Syracuse Crunch:

• Keven Veilleux: Man amongst boys tonight. 2 goals and an assist. Dangling all over the ice. Sickening stick handling skills. He may not be able to get away with the dangling come regular season, but he’ll easily get 30-35 goals this year and 60-70 assists if he stays healthy.
• Andrew Lord: Gordie Howe hattie (goal / assist / fight) in the FIRST PERIOD. Made a statement he does not want to get banished to The Wheel this year.
• Pascal Morency: Hit everything that moved tonight. Did not fight Mirasty.
• Geoff Walker: Solid game. Had a pair of goals.
• Ben Street: Held his own tonight and did not look out of place.
• Carl Sneep: Can easily anchor this D corps. Yes I said it. Bortuzzo, Strait, Engelland, Hutchinson, Potter have all yet to arrive in Wilkes-Barre but you could have sworn that he was in his 4th AHL season. He is ready. He didn’t score a goal but was shut down on D.
• Chris Collins: Will easily be a top line forward for us. He didn’t score but he played a hand in a bunch of goals and was a leader out there.

There were some guys in Wilkes-Barre uniforms who stood out in a bad way to me:

• Peter Merth. Three stupid penalties. Was basically a liability on D. Cut him or send him to Wheeling.
• Andrew Orpik. Let’s just put it this way and I am not picking on the kid. He is not his brother. Those are lofty expectations and unfair, but he didn’t do anything for me which left me saying he should stick around. Get better in the ECHL and come back later this year.
• Joey Haddad. Had a terrible game. Got pushed around out there tonight. Was overall invisible all night. Credit Syracuse’s toughness? Just a bad game? Not ready? I don’t know, but with as loaded as this team is going to be you are going to be left behind if you have many more games like this.

Mattias Modig got the nod in net, backed up by Patrick Killeen. Swap the two tomorrow. Sill, Boulerice and Fata were scratched. Radio said that they are all OK but resting. Expect Fata to get in a game or two this week.

In other news from around the league, Binghamton has a new beat writer. She is on Twitter too. I’ll throw up the link on the “AHL Beat Writers” section soon. Peoria blew a two goal lead and lost to Rockford in a shootout in the only other exhibition game in the AHL tonight. The AHL listed the 2010-2011 On-Ice Officials for this year. I am intrigued by referees. 32 referees this year. A bunch of men I have never heard of but will be looking up to see what their tendencies are (are they more like Nygel Pelletier, or are they more like Jeff Smith.)

Also I found these in the Igloo (the store inside the arena) …

If you want one, I can buy and ship to you. Leave me a comment. I can e-mail you particulars.

Expect cuts from Pittsburgh tomorrow. Radio only for me as I live tweet the rematch tomorrow v. the Crunch blind (no AHL Live) so we’ll see how that goes. Check out Bombulie later. Later!