Chirps from Center Ice

Figured I would drop in here and post about the week that was on Coal Street and set up the weekend.

Coal Street announced Wednesday what we speculated to for a while here, they have signed G Anthony Peters to an AHL contract through the 2018-19 season.

Certainly not unexpected, Peters played better on his second professional tryout contract (PTO) than he did on his first, he had a six game winning streak that included a shutout against Hershey.

Wilkes-Barre could not sign Peters to a third PTO, so the standard AHL contract is what he gets. Insuring his rights through next season is a no brainer as well. His ECHL club in Cincinnati retains his rights at that level.

Pittsburgh has two goalies in the pipeline, Filip Gustavsson and Alex D’Orio. One or both could filter here on ATO’s once their seasons are over. It may be different for Gustavsson since he’s playing over in Europe, I’m not totally sure. Good on Wilkes-Barre to sort of fill out one goalie spot for next season at the very least.

Updates from practice this week go as follows…

Tom summed it all up in one tweet…

Update from Thursday…

About them IceHogs. The Pens put together a nice primer on them you can read here. They are sixth place in the Central, which is probably the most competitive division top to bottom in the entire AHL. Rockford is 3-6-0-1 in their last ten. Roster consists of names that don’t really jump off the page. It’s a hard working team that is looking to come in and play an opponent they have never faced before. Pens can’t be slouches.

Pens hit the road to play a Syracuse team in fourth in the North that has kind of become the forgotten team in the division. It’s a four team race essentially, Syracuse is fourth but got a big boost this week when Tampa Bay reclaimed Gabriel Dumont off of waivers and assigned him to Syracuse.

Hershey visits Sunday. Bears have won three in a row and beat Toronto Monday. Hershey’s got a lot of ground to make up to push for a playoff spot but are on the right track.

Pittsburgh sent Teddy Blueger back to Wilkes-Barre Monday. Patric Hornqvist practiced Thursday in full and Tom Kuhnhackl will accompany the team on their road trip to Carolina and Florida this weekend, so Zach Aston-Reese may end up being reassigned for cap purposes. Stay tuned.

Out the door, the AHL Playoff Primer is out again for another year. Penguins magic number to clinch a playoff berth heading into the weekend is 40. Lehigh Valley’s magic number is 30, but they have five more games played than the Penguins right now and are in first place and are expected to have a lower number. Penguins have the third weakest strength of schedule, 6th (.542) out of 8 team division ahead of Charlotte (.540) and Lehigh Valley (.536) Getting to be that time of year again.

Back tomorrow for the 3 pm setup against Rockford as Wilkes-Barre begins another three in three weekend.