Chirps from Center Ice

Been dogging on Philip Samuelsson a bit here and on Twitter. Tonight, with two primary assists on two Penguins goals he silenced those including myself who said that he needs to get shipped to Wheeling in a 3-2 Wilkes-Barre victory in Binghamton.

Scott Munroe vs. Robin Lehner. Binghamton didn’t dress a single veteran player because bodies are banged up. Zach Sill was out for the Pens with an upper body injury, Cody Wild, Alex Grant, Matt Rust and Ryan Schnell joined him in the press box. Niko Dimitrakos was in, Brian Gibbons as well. Lots of shuffling going on. The Walker-Lerg-McDonald line was back, too.

First Period: Philip Samuelsson point shot was saved by Lehner and the rebound came to Bryan Lerg who gave the Pens an early 1-0 lead. Then, David Dziurzynski dangled around Robert Bortuzzo and unleashed a wrist shot snipe which beat Munroe to even things at one. Later, with Derek Grant in the box and then Dziurzynski in the box for boarding on Nick Petersen, Colin McDonald would clean up the rebound to push the Pens back out in front 2-1.

At some point I tweeted that this was the first lead WBS had in quite a while. They did not lead vs. Hershey, Syracuse or Worcester. You had to go all the way back to last Saturday in Manchester when the Pens enjoyed a lead in a hockey game.

Second Period: Mike Hoffman had a breakaway but was unable to score on it. Then, Sneep was whistled for holding and the Pens in the penalty kill did not allow the B-Sens a shot on goal. Really a quick moving period with the teams going up and down the ice.

Third Period: Binghamton started out guns blazing, taking 11 shots in the period before Wilkes-Barre registered one. During, Joey Mormina covered his hand in a wild scrum in Munroe’s crease on the puck which was a penalty shot awarded to Nikita Filatov. He was unsuccessful on the penalty shot, however. Then, with Alex Picard in the box for tripping, Josh Godfrey would throw a change up at the net which either fooled Munroe or he was screened on. This evened things at 2. Late, a Samuelsson point shot again was deflected this time by Brandon DeFazio. After some rough stuff, the Pens held on and won.

Three Stars: 3) Colin McDonald (goal, assist, +1) 2) Philip Samuelsson (two assists, +2) and 1) Brandon DeFazio (game winning goal, +2)

Around the Division: Hershey lost to Lake Erie 5-4 in a wild game which saw the Bears even things at four late only to have Lake Erie storm back and win it on a wild goal mouth scrum. Norfolk edged Providence 3-2. Syracuse was idle.

Standings: 1-WBS (27) 2-NOR (25) 3-HER (23) 4-SYR (21) and 5-BNG (16)

Conference: St. John’s lost 6-3 to Toronto tonight so they are still in first with 28 points but now Wilkes-Barre sits a point behind them with 27. The rest of the conference looks like this: 3-CT (25) 4-NOR (25) 5-ADK (23) 6-HER (23) 7-BRI (23) 8-MCH (23)

Credit Binghamton for running with Wilkes-Barre tonight. When asked about the lineup tonight, here is what head coach Kurt Klinendorst told Bob Howard of the Power Play Post Show:

Our line-up vs WBS tonight, are you kidding me? We couldn’t even compare but we sure did compete. That’s a good thing.

Debate amongst yourselves if you think a team that “couldn’t compare” with the Penguins nearly won the game tonight on whether this is good or bad.

Penguins ship to Norfolk Monday. That is one trip I would love to take but am not. Updates may be scarce here on the blog till then. So if you will, take a look at the First Quarter Grades I ran on Thanksgiving, after the Syracuse game.

Let’s Go Pens!