Chirps from Center Ice

Strange game tonight. Tons to get to. Lots to dissect. Pens lost this one 7-5 tonight. Lots of different ways to go at this one.

Scott Munroe vs. Iiro Tarkki. Boatloads of lineup changes after the disappointing weekend in New England. Carl Sneep, Brian Gibbons, Geoff Walker, Alex Grant and Paul Thompson all scratched.

First Period: Before you even could say “huh” the Pens were down 3-0. Scott Munroe had not made a single save. Kyle Palmieri, Rick Schofield and J-F Jacques all scored. Thiessen relieved Munroe. Then late, Palmieri struck again on the power play to make it 4-0 Syracuse. Final shots this period was 15-7 Wilkes-Barre.

Second Period: Matt Kennedy scored even strength to make it 5-0 Syracuse. He took a nice feed from Rick Schofield and went 5-hole on Thiessen. Then next shift Alex Picard fresh from Pittsburgh made it 5-1. But, Nicolas Deschamps pushed the lead back to five and made it 6-1. This made for six Syracuse goals on ten shots. Pens would miss a bunch of open nets but this was due to last second stick lifts by Syracuse blue liners. A flurry of goals from the Penguins would close out the period with Bryan Lerg getting one on a deflection of a Jason Williams point shot. Then, Zach Sill would score on a  wraparound to make it 6-3. Syracuse would take its time out and Bryan Lerg would score again to make it 6-4 on a nice wrist shot. Pens would run out of time in the period. It looked like late that Syracuse had no answers. 15+ minutes of this period was spent in the Penguins offensive zone.

Astute Twitter follower Sean Mc tweeted that Munroe was off the hook for the loss despite not recording a save.

Third Period: The effort was there, the urgency was not. I tweeted at the end of the second that next goal would win the game. That would come off of the stick of Peter Holland with Simon Despres in the box for holding the stick when all he needed to do was pass out of his defensive zone instead of trying a fancy dangle move. Late, John Hynes would use a strategy move I liked. With 5 minutes to go in the period and Wilkes-Barre on a power play he pulled Thiessen. At that point, why not? Syracuse had only 18 shots on goal at this point. Syracuse was unable to net the empty netter and Ryan Craig would make it 7-5. Wilkes-Barre would use its timeout but get no more goals.

Three Stars: 3) Bryan Lerg (2 goals, even, 9 shots) 2) J-F Jacques (goal, assist, +1, Gordie Howe hat trick) 1) Kyle Palmieri (2 goals, assist, +1)

Around the Division: Norfolk lost 6-3 to Charlotte. Hershey edged Providence 4-3. Binghamton was idle.

Standings: Hershey the winner of the evening with the two teams ahead of them losers. 1-WBS (24) 2-HER (21) 3-NOR (21) 4-SYR (19) 5-BNG (14)

Conference: 1-StJ (27) 2-WBS (24) 3-CT (23) 4-HER (21) 5-MCH (21) 6-MCH (21) 7-SPR (20) 8-ALB (20)

It’s going to be interesting what Bombulie’s take is on this one. For what it is worth, if you allow a team 18 shots on goal all game and score five goals of your own, you will win 98% of the time in this league. Penguins put 54 shots on goal tonight. Iiro Tarkki is a hell of a goaltender to begin with. Regardless, if WBS limits a team to 18 shots and even scores three goals it still probably wins a game.

It’s the peaks and valleys of a minor league hockey season. It happens. With all the success Wilkes-Barre has had these past two seasons, this performance with these stats was due.

Penguins are at the quarter pole on the season. I will try to get the First Quarter Grades out tomorrow as I have all the stats lined up. All it takes is getting everything down on paper and in the blog. If I run it tomorrow be prepared for nonstop tweets about it all weekend, as you’ll all probably miss it eating Thanksgiving dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Let’s Go Pens!