Chirps from Center Ice

The Penguins were on the road Saturday night in Hershey for their third of four preseason games. They won in overtime via a goal by Frank Corrado by a score of 3-2. The Penguins couldn’t score on 11 power play opportunities.

Here is a look at the lines…

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Casey DeSmith opposed Parker Milner, who was replaced at the halfway mark by Adam Carlson.

Before the game, the Penguins cut five players from camp. To Wheeling: Hunter Fejes, Dan Milan, Kevin Schulze. Matt Petgrave is under contract with the Brampton Beast. Justin Parizek was straight up released.

Also, some injury updates, Jarred Tinordi has, “yet to be evaluated” per Mike O’Brien and Colin Smith participated in the morning skate. Both left Friday’s game vs. Binghamton.

In the first, the Penguins struck first when J-S Dea picked a corner on Milner while the Penguins had a delayed penalty that gave Wilkes-Barre a 1-0 lead. Neither team scored on the power play, the Penguins going 0/2 and the Bears 0/1.

There was a big hit when Connor Hobbs flattened Jeff Taylor with a hit that earned Hobbs an interference penalty. Taylor was OK and shook off the hit. Here it is, courtesy of our friends from Chocolate Hockey…

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In the second, Reid Gardiner doubled the Penguins lead with a big shot at 1:25 off of a face-off in the Pens offensive zone. The Penguins were running the Bears all over the rink forcing Hershey into penalty after penalty, but could not cash on the power plays that referees David Banfield an Peter Schlittenhardt were giving them.

So Dustin Gazley takes things into his own hands and scores on a n delayed penalty that cut the Penguins lead to one.

Undeterred, the Penguins continued to goad the Bears into penalties and had a perfect opportunity to extend the lead back to two again when Wayne Simpson clipped Dominik Simon with his stick that drew blood.

In the third, the 2:59 that the Penguins had on the power play to open the period came and went. That was 0/9 so far missing regular players like Daniel Sprong, Tom Kostopoulos and Zach Aston-Reese.

Still, with no consistent five on five allowed by Schlittenhardt / Banfield, every time you turned around one of the teams were on the power play.

Finally, Chris Bourque scored with the extra man on for the goalie, to tie the game to force overtime.

In overtime, teams went back and forth, then J-S Dea stripped a Bear of the puck, led a 2-on-0 with Frank Corrado, passed to the Penguins defensemen who scored to win the game for the Penguins.

Late, Pittsburgh released Jay McClement from his professional tryout agreement. Penguins have one more move to make which is looking more and more like Patric Hornqvist to injured reserve to buy more time for Hornqvist and the Penguins brass for making a decision on what they want to do with Josh Archibald / Derrick Pouliot.

Penguins conclude their preseason with a 5 p.m. start in Binghamton Sunday. Recap after the game.