Chirps from Center Ice

It looked like for much of the game tonight that the Albany Devils were going to get the first ever win in Devils minor league franchise history tonight. They did not. They battled the Penguins every step of the way tonight and the Pens prevailed in a shootout, 2-1. The win pushes the Pens to a franchise tying 51 win season, and 12 points up on Hershey for first with two games in hand and cuts the magic number to 5.

Brad Thiessen v. Mike McKenna. John Curry was back from his very minor injury. Alex Grant skated in warmups but was a scratch.

First Period: Keven Veilleux hit everything that moved in an early shift. He played well this game. Then, Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond (PL3) sat for a roughing call and the Pens scored on the ensuing power play on a Ryan Craig hack and whack on McKenna’s doorstep. The teams would trade a few penalties in the last five minutes, seems like the last 5 was spent 4 on 4 and the score would be 1-0 Pens after 1.

Second Period: Devils had to kill off about :30 of an Adam Henrique boarding call. As he was coming out of the box a Devils player passed it to him wide open. He broke in and drew iron behind Thiessen. Zach Sill continued his strong play, everywhere on the PK and pretty much all game. Then, later in a scrum, PL3 scored on Thiessen. For those who are not familiar with his body of work, he has 250+ PIMs this year and is a fighter and not a scorer. It was really a bad goal given the circumstances because the Devils were out playing us.

Third Period: Pens would clamp down and allow Albany just three shots on goal all period. Brett Sterling and Ryan Craig would have a 2 on 1 chance and then later Ben Street and David Marshall. Neither would score. To overtime we went…

…other than a Brett Sterling high stick with 36 seconds left to play there were only a few anxious moments. To the shootout!

Keven Veilleux and Brett Sterling would score for Wilkes-Barre and Matt Anderson for the Devils.

Actually kind of sad to see it end in a shootout. I really wanted to see who would have scored what would have been the game winning goal. In playoffs, there are no shootouts.

Three Stars: PL3 (goal +1), Ryan Craig (goal, -1) and Brett Sterling (assist, game winning shootout goal)

Around the Division: Binghamton beat Syracuse 6-3 and Norfolk dropped Adirondack 2-1.

Standings: Pens get to 103 points and 12 up on Hershey’s 91. Survive the weekend with a 10 point lead and the race for the division is all but over. Norfolk and Charlotte are deadlocked in a tie for third with 86 points. Binghamton is fifth with 81 points and Albany, Syracuse and Adirondack are 65, 61 and 58 points respectively.

Friday: Charlotte is in Connecticut, Hershey travels to Adirondack, Manchester plays Norfolk in Virginia, Bridgeport plays Portland in Maine and the Penguins travel (as do I) to Binghamton in a must have game for their psyche. Binghamton has given us fits this year. We need to beat these guys soundly.

Go Pens.