Chirps from Center Ice

         vs.        

2                              5

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A pair of goals from Gabe Klassen, one from Raivis Ansons and Nolan Renwick plus a power play goal from Phil Tomasino, all in the first period, is enough to stand up and defeat the Hershey Bears 5-2 on Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre.

With Sam Poulin a distant memory and the offense sputtering at times, it’s nice to see depth take over and pull this team to another victory.

Here’s how they lined up…

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Lineup Notes: Nolan Renwick for Avery Hayes, Hayes was reported as injured. Sebastian Aho returned from injury, David Breazeale was recalled from Wheeling and replaced Matt Dumba and Scooter Brickey.

First Period: Talk about starting on time. They score five goals, every player on the fourth line scored and led Hershey 5-1 at the end of the first period where they outshoot the Bears 13-3 in the period.

Nolan Renwick started early with a goal at 2:04. Phil Kemp crashes the net and here’s Renwick picking up the loose change.

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First AHL goal of the season for Renwick.

Raivis Ansons off the face-off at 3:36 and it started to get the feel of a runaway train…

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But hold on, Bogdan Trineyev scored in the slot to cut the deficit to one.

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But that just pissed off the Penguins.

Gabe Klassen would score back to back goals of the highlight reel variety.

A snipe at 10:58 at the expiration of a Hershey power play….

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…and then this backhand shot that beats Garin Bjorklund for good, enter Clay Stevenson.

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Stevenson would get scored on with a Phil Tomasino power play goal here that pushes the score to 5-1.

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Whew. That’s a lot of goals. You would expect more in the second period right?

Second Period: Wrong. It devolved into a penalty slop fest. Some of the penalties I thought sucked on both sides of the whistle by refs Austin O’Rourke and Chris Conway. I thought the Bears were victimized more by some terrible calls.

Third Period: Ivan Miroshnichenko scores just 1:12 in and here’s where you think the Bears start mounting their comeback, right?

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Uh-uh, brother. More penalty slop from O’Rourke / Conway and that was it.

Sadly, the Bears are just the offensive output of Miroshnichenko, Trineyev and sometimes Ilya Protas. That’s it. I really don’t know any of the names on the roster save for Louie Belpedio and a few others. Gone are the days where they had every day, lethal scorers.

Here’s a tweet from Mark Divver who covers the Providence Bruins that I think word for word you can apply to the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins.

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The Penguins outworked the Bears tonight, and outwork a lot of opponents every night.

Three Stars: 3) Nolan Renwick (goal) 2) Raivis Ansons (goal, assist) 1) Gabe Klassen (two goals)

The Good: That first period was something, wasn’t it?

The Bad: They did nothing in the second and third period and took a boatload of unnecessary penalties.

Turning Point: The first Klassen goal, right after the Penguins killed the penalty after Hershey had scored back in the first gets it here. Hershey scoring to tie it at. two and I think it’s a different outcome.

Around the Division: Lehigh Valley / Charlotte was postponed because the Checkers had travel issues. Charlotte will end up playing a three in three with Hershey Sunday, making up the game they were supposed to play with the Phantoms on Monday and then seeing the Penguins Tuesday.

With that out of the way, Providence pounds the Springfield Thunderbirds 7-1…Hartford beats Bridgeport 5-2.

Standings: Penguins 46 – Providence 43 – Charlotte 32 – Lehigh Valley 31 – Hershey 29 – Hartford 25 – Springfield and Bridgeport 24

Wheeling Update: The ECHL is on strike, but I think we are back.

It should be noted that any Penguins player on contact to either Wilkes-Barre or Pittsburgh was recalled to Wilkes-Barre. Not every AHL team did that for their ECHL affiliate.

Video Highlights: 

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Back at it Sunday with the Phantoms. More then.

Let’s Go Pens!