Chirps from Center Ice

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Penguins close out East Division play today with a hold-onto-your-butts 4-3 win against the Hershey Bears.

Penguins were up 4-1 with about ten minutes left in the third, the Bears get two goals and almost a third, which would have made a lot of people in Norfolk mad. Just look at some of the tweets I got today from some Norfolk fans:

So this is basically a lesson in what I like to call, “co-opetition” a mash between competition and cooperation. The Admirals fans were happy that the Pens beat the Bears, because they are tied in points with one another. I am happy that the Springfield Falcons beat the Portland Pirates today, keeping the Pirates back of the Pens by three points.

Brad Thiessen vs. Philipp Grubauer – no lineup changes for the Penguins today.

First Period: Dmitry Orlov opens up the scoring by peeling off a Penguin, spinning and firing at the net. The puck hit something on the way in and the Bears were on the board. Then, with just under ten minutes to play, Jayson Megna backhands a pass through a Hershey defenseman’s legs to Paul Thompson, who had a wide open cage to shoot into to tie the game. Then the Penguins, with the benefits of the referee’s whistles, score again on the power play when Brian Dumoulin scored from the point on a screen to put the Pens ahead 2-1.

Second Period: Chad Kolarik is a goal scorer. Goal scorers know how to score goals. Goal scorers go to areas where goals are scored. Kolarik cut to the net where Trevor Smith found him for the score to push the Pens ahead 3-1. Then the Bears had an extended power play of 5 on 3 time.

Remember a few years ago when the Bears would get a power play it wasn’t a matter of if they would score, it was when? That didn’t happen today for the Bears, whose power play in this sequence looked like a shell of itself in days of old. It frustrated the Bears. You could see it on their faces and hear it in your ears with all the bench doors slamming. A timeout by head coach Mark French proved futile. The Penguins were able to kill it all off.

Third Period: Penguins opened the period on the power play. Who scored it you ask? Chad Kolarik. Goal scorers score goals that bury the opposition. Turns out, this goal would be a huge one. Bears roar back in the final ten minutes on a power play goal by Ryan Potulny. Head Coach John Hynes called timeout, seemingly upset with the Pens efforts. It did seem to me that the Pens were in la-la land, up 4-1 on a Sunday afternoon to the Bears who are fighting for their playoff lives. Peter LeBlanc scores with just over six minutes left to play to make it 4-3.

Penguins clamped down after that and hung on to win, with Grubauer pulled.

The Penguins almost lost this game today. But they didn’t. They are getting hot at the right time. Goal scorers are scoring goals. Power play is all of a sudden hot, defense is always a rock. The penalty kill is the tops in the American Hockey League. We have arguably the two best goaltenders in the League. Getting hot at the right time?

What was it that Bombulie said a few weeks ago? Buy the ticket. Take the ride.

Buckle up.

Oh, by the way, Saturday and Sunday were played without Beau Bennett, who was recalled to Pittsburgh today.

The magic number is four. I don’t see that diminishing any with the lack of games this week.

No one else played in the division. Your Penguins have 84 points. They are five back of the Crunch, three back of the B-Sens, nine ahead of Hershey and Norfolk.

The conference looks like this: 1) PRO (93) 2) SPR (91) 3) SYR (89) 4) BNG (87) 5) WBS (84) 6) POR (81) 7) CT (78) 8) HER (75)

Wilkes-Barre has 72 games played, by far the most in the Eastern Conference. Portland has three games in hand. Binghamton and Syracuse have two. Maybe I will do a “strength of schedule” blog post this week to help on content. Stay tuned.

Let’s Go Pens!