Chirps from Center Ice

I don’t care if it’s preseason, it’s always fun beating Hershey.

A more regular lineup for the Penguins tonight who beat the Bears 6-2.

Lines were:

Garrett Wilson / Linus Ölund / Jim Hayes
Tom Di Pauli / Teddy Blueger / Anthony Angello
Adam Johnson / Sam Lafferty / Ryan Haggerty
Troy Josephs / Tobias Lindberg / Sam Miletic

Will O’Neill / Chris Summers
Johnny Austin / Stefan Elliott
Matt Abt / Ethan Prow

Anthony Peters / Danny Tirone

Craig Skudalski took warmups. He signed a PTO with Wheeling, who open camp next week.

Penguins jump out to a 2-0 lead in the first period on a nice clean up goal by Sam Lafferty and a set up pass by Troy Josephs to Sam Miletic a few minutes later.

Matt Abt, who played well enough Thursday to earn a second look tonight, took a shot on Vanecek that was stopped, but big body Anthony Angello dug it out, shifted it over to Lafferty for the first goal of the game. Nice play by Abt and forecheck by Angello.

Bears caught napping overloaded on the near side when Josephs wheeled around the net and set up Miletic for the second goal.

Two Sam’s scored in the first. There’s a pun in there somewhere.

:15 into the second, Hershey cuts into the lead with a goal by Jeremy Morin. He raced past two defenders and scored.

Penguins could not score on a 4:00 double minor, so at least the power play is in midseason form.

Ethan Prow scored on a dart from the blue line that beat Vanecek high. I don’t think there was a screen involved but Anthony Angello was close by. He’s a big enough body to cause disturbances in front of the net.

Steven Whitney scored for the Bears when the Penguins were caught standing around spectating to bring the Bears back within one.

But Wilkes-Barre got up on the wheel and got two goals by the end of the second, one by Teddy Blueger on a nice give and go with Ryan Haggerty and then another on a terrific shot between the legs of a Bears defender by Sam Lafferty, his second of the game.

If you have “Good Sam” in your pun pool this year as possible headlines for the blog, that one may go off the board quickly this season and be overused is Sam Miletic makes the team also.

We had fun with it on Twitter after Sam Miletic scored a power play goal that made it 6-2. Endless pun possibilities.

Anyway, Penguins were essentially on cruise control all period, finally got the power play to click and even killed off a Will O’Neill double minor.

Three stars were Haggerty, Lafferty and Miletic.

These two teams meet Sunday afternoon in Hershey at 5. Talk to you then.