Chirps from Center Ice

The day is finally upon us when the American Hockey League announced its schedule for the 2011-12 season. Here is a full breakdown for the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins:

The Pens will open their 13th season of play at home vs. the Hershey Bears on Saturday, October 8 at 7:05. The Bears, the night before, will be in Binghamton on the leagues opening night.

The longest road stretch for the Penguins will be four games in October, at Springfield, Hershey, Syracuse and Manchester on October 21, 22, 28 and 29th respectively. The will also have a four game road stretch in March, at Providence, Bridgeport, Springfield and Norfolk on March 9, 10, 11 and 14th respectively.

The longest home stand will be five games in March also, vs. Worcester, Binghamton, Adirondack, St. John’s and Springfield on March 17, 18, 23, 24 and 25th respectively.

The first ever games with the St. John’s IceCaps will be in St. John’s on January 14 and 15. The IceCaps come to Northeast Pennsylvania on March 6 and March 24.

The dates versus Hershey are as follows, with home dates in boldface: October 8, October 22, November 4, November 11, November 25, December 10, December 27, December 28, February 3, February 5, February 12 and April 6.

The Pens will square off against the defending Calder Cup Champion Binghamton Senators on the following dates with the home dates in bold: October 15, November 5, November 15, November 26, December 7, December 13, January 28, February 17, March 18 and April 13.

The League reduced the schedule from 80 games to 76 games and in doing so eliminated the four games in five nights which was commonplace. Three games in three nights still exist, with the Pens having to endure the triumvirate of games for a total of seven times, with many late in the year.

A full breakdown of games by month is as follows: October, 9 games with 4 home and 5 away. November, 13 games with 5 home and 8 away. December, 11 games with 6 home and 5 away. January, 12 games with an even 6 home and 6 away. February, 12 games with 7 home and 5 away. March, 13 games with 6 home and 7 away and April sees the Pens play 6 games with 4 at home and 2 away.

That breakdown isn’t good enough for you? Fine. The Pens play a total of 12 games on Sunday with 5 home games and 7 on the road. The Pens play on Monday twice, once at home and once on the road with that road game being a 1 p.m. start time in Portland versus the Pirates at the Cumberland County Civic Center. Wilkes-Barre / Scranton plays a total of 7 times on Tuesday with 4 home games and 3 on the road. On Wednesdays the Pens play 8 times with an even 4 games at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza and 4 on the road. On Thursdays the Pens play twice, 1 home and 1 road game. Fridays the Pens play a total of 19 games, 10 at home and 9 on the road. Saturdays are by far the busiest day for the Pens as they play a sum total of 26 games, 14 at home and 12 on the road.

Some other casual observations…

There is going to be an All-Star Classic again this season. It will be January 29-30th. No venue has been chosen yet by the League. I would anticipate word on this before the puck drops on October 7th.

Chatter about the Pens playing the Phantoms in an outdoor game vs. the Adirondack Phantoms in conjunction with the Winter Classic in Philadelphia this year was debunked. January 6 was the date tossed around. The Pens host the Rochester Americans on that date. The Phantoms are at home versus the Bears on that date as well.

The theme this season for the Penguins is going to feature a Friday the 13th motif, as the calendar schedule features a “Jason Mask” from the popular 80s horror series as evidenced by the block schedule the Penguins put out.

The AHL will have every team in action only twice, on Saturday, February 18 and Friday, April 13.

The Pens also have given the fans a look at the third jersey, which you can see here. I will have more clearer, up close pictures tomorrow at Pensfest.

So there you have it. Dissection complete. If I have missed anything or am incorrect with my calculations, please let me know in the comment section. Check out the Penguins Insider later too, as Jonathan always has tidbits that go unseen by the naked eye.

Let’s Go Pens!!!

The day is nearly upon us as the League tweeted today that the the schedule for the 2011-2012 season will be made available to the public tomorrow, Thursday at 4 p.m. Wilkes-Barre time pending Board of Governors approval. The Board will vote on it first thing tomorrow morning and then it will publish at 4 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. Look for a tweet from the League tomorrow mid-morning on whether the Board passed it or not.

Two other things before I go…

Binghamton and Hamilton will hookup in the preseason almost guaranteeing that Wilkes-Barre will not play the Senators in the preseason. That fourth road game for Wilkes-Barre has yet to be announced. I’d expect that news to come sooner rather than later.

Finally I reached 600 follows on the Twitter side Tuesday night due to in large part the help of the Pens on Twitter. I want to thank that braintrust who suggested me to their followers and thank all new and old followers. This means I will be giving away two tickets to the September 19 Black and Gold Game II to a random follower on Monday. The other pair I have will be up for grabs probably sometime by the end of the month. If I get to 625 follows, I will buy another two pair and have another drawing and will do so for every 25 new followers I get (650, 675, 700, etc.) so if you are a long time blog reader and a non-follower, follow for your chance to win.

I will have the Penguins schedule posted blogside tomorrow afternoon around dinnertime, but immediate reactions will be had on the Twitter side.

I have nothing for you other than these links which are of interest:

• The AHL schedule will be out this week.
• Hockey’s Future has a feature on Paul Thomspon who will be a mainstay in Wilkes-Barre this season.
• Some kid by the name of Daniil Tarasov received an invite to prospect camp next month.
• The SportsBusiness Journal and Daily released its report on minor league markets today. Hershey was number one. Wilkes-Barre was 139. This is out of 241 markets. There is actually a bunch of articles on the list, which you can click off in the main article. I talked about it a bit on the Twitter side today. I’m not going to make a separate blog post on this because the list is on a national, broad scale covering all sports. If you are interested in my take, hop over to the Twitter feed.

On the subject of the Twitter feed, I have some shameless self-promotion to get out of the way. I have two sets of tickets to give away for the Black and Gold Game II September 19. That’s two sets of two, for a total of four. Anyway, if I get to 600 followers on the Twitter side, two random followers will win them.

Next post should, hopefully, be reaction to the 2011-2012 AHL schedule.

Keep chirpin’. Go Penguins.

Couple of moves today made by some teams which involve ex-WBS Penguins.

First, the Syracuse Crunch signed ex-Captain Nathan Smith to an AHL deal today. Smith captained the 2007-08 team which lost to the Chicago Wolves in the Calder Cup Finals that year. Check out some of these names which played for the Pens that year:

• Dave Gove, who is now selling real estate in Cape Cod (whom you can follow on Twitter @SellingCapeCod )
• Dennis Bonvie, his last year of professional hockey.
• Everyones favorite twooper, Paul Bissonnette @BizNasty2point0
• Assistant Coach Alain Nasreddine.

Smith is most famously remembered in these parts for this incident. It’s too cold in Syracuse for that kind of activity.

Second, the Winnipeg Jets are giving a tryout to Janne Pesonen. The link takes you to a site which is all in Finnish, so this is as good a time as any to play Fun with Babelfish, courtesy of Google Translate:

Ice hockey world champion Janne Pesonen goes to show their talents NHL club training camp in Winnipeg.

The attacker Pesonen, 29, Winnipeg trip in early September, well before the start of training camp. Pesonen, the camp aims to one-way NHL contract.

– Winnipeg direction had a clear interest in, and I am going to fight tooth and nail to one-way contract, Pesonen told STT.

Pesonen kontrahti KHL league play with Kazan last season ended. Many European club has shown interest in him,Pesonen, but would like to pursue an NHL dream. He played in North America, Pittsburgh Penguins in seven games during the 2008-09 season, spending most of farmiryhmässä.

– I like the North American style of play. I believe that I still have to give there.

Winnipeg Jets return to the NHL league a long break after the next season. Society have successfully played, among others, Teemu Selanne and Teppo Numminen.

– Finnish Society of previous players have done a fantastic job. I believe that in Winnipeg, valued at more Finnish, Pesonen thought.

I don’t think, if Pesonen doesn’t make the team out of camp, he would go to St. John’s. I think he would just go back to Europe.

Finally I’d be remiss if, when mentioning Pesonen, I didn’t include this link. Enjoy.