If you noticed me on Twitter tonight you noticed a much more reserved game call. The reason for that was that Chris Roy from the Maine Hockey Journal contacted me earlier this week and asked if I would do some freelance work for him. Of course I volunteered. Chris was able to get me a press credential for the night so I sat in the WBS press box again which is why if you were at the game, you did not see me in my regular center ice seat.

There are rules up here that I must abide by. The golden rule is “no cheering.” So I went with that on the game call on Twitter and kept it level (as best I could)

I thought about writing two stories. One for Chris, one for the blog. I figured I would let you, the reader, see what I came up with for Roy and enjoy it from there.

Chris may edit this down to a humble paragraph. I won’t know till tomorrow. Without further delay, here it is. Let me know in comments what you think:

WILKES-BARRE, PA — The first ten minutes of Saturday’s game against the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton couldn’t have gone any better for the Portland Pirates.

The next ten, and ultimately the final 45 with overtime, were a much different story.

The Portland Pirates earn a point in the first meeting of the year with the Penguins, 4-3 via the shootout.

The first ten minutes of the game were tight checking, disciplined hockey. Then, three seconds after a penalty to Pirates defenseman David Rundblad expired, Penguins center Riley Holzapfel cut to the net where Paul Thompson fed him a pass off a rebound of a Joe Morrow shot. Then, 1:23 later, Trevor Smith scored the first of two goals in the period for him off a pass from Penguins rookie Beau Bennett. Smith would later go on to pick the pocket of Phil Lane trying to get the puck out of the Pirates defensive and wired a shot over the glove of Visentin.

It was a second period of fortunes for the Pirates as they took advantage of special teams with Brandon Gormley scoring his first professional goal on the power play. Chris Brown and Chris Conner worked some magic with Conner feeding Brown with Penguins defenders draped all over him.

The third period would not slow the Pirates down in the momentum department. Despite being outshot by the Penguins 13-7, they still managed to pull even off a wild sequence when Captain Alexandre Bolduc would bring the Pirates even with his team leading 7th goal of the season. Portland continued to press but got caught by the referee’s whistle as they would have to kill two penalties, but the Portland penalty killing unit would successfully do so. They would then receive two penalties, one from Penguins defenseman Dylan Reese at the end of the third but could not get the go ahead goal.

In overtime, the Pirates outshot the Penguins 8-2 and really blitzkrieged Thiessen with an array of shots but the Penguins netminder held the Pirates out of his net.

Benn Ferriero and Eric Tangradi scored in the shootout. No Pirates were able to get past Thiessen.

“First ten minutes I thought we were fine, then we gave them room to move and to skate and they started to push back.” Coach Ray Edwards said after the game. “I liked the way we fought back there in the second and responded to get a couple back and ultimately fight to get a point. Managing momentum was a big part of the game.”

Mark Visentin stopped 38 of 41 shots to fall to 1-1-1 in the season. Brad Thiessen improved to 2-1, stopping 36 of 39.

Biddeford native and Penguins defenseman Brian Dumoulin was scoreless, but managed a +2 for the evening.

Heavyweights Joel Rechlicz and Steve MacIntyre both dressed but did not square off.

The Pirates were 1 for 4 on the power play and the Penguins were 0 for 5.

The Pirates face-off against the Hershey Bears tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 p.m.

—

Not bad, huh?

Alright. Paying off the rest of the blog with the stuff you read about after the game recap:

Around the Division: St. John’s beats Hershey in Chocolatetown 2-1. Binghamton beats Norfolk 4-2. Rochester beat Syracuse in my game to watch 5-2. Seems that the Penguins and Amerks have the Crunch’s number this year.

Standings: Syracuse 16 — Norfolk 12 — Binghamton 12 — Penguins 12 — Hershey 11

Wheeling Update: Nailers get dropped by the Walleye again 5-3. Keven Veilleux registered an assist, Cody Chupp a goal, Carl Sneep an assist. Patrick Killeen stopped 22 of 27.

Penguins are off until Wednesday when they host the Springfield Falcons.

Penguins penalty kill was ranked second overall in the AHL at 94.8% coming into the game tonight vs. the Hershey Bears. That will take a significant drop downwards tomorrow morning as the Penguins lose this game 3-1 with all three goals for Hershey coming on the power play.

Jeff Zatkoff vs. Braden Holtby — no lineup changes for the Penguins tonight.

First Period: Can best be described as well-disciplined, very crisp period of hockey. Both teams had a chance on the power play, with the highlight of the period and probably the game and maybe the season coming when Jeff Zatkoff robbed Zach Hamill on a back-door play that the Bears are notorious for. Tom Grace on radio already dubbed it save of the year.

Second Period: Warren Peters takes an interference call at :19. Bears waste no time with Tomas Kundratek shooting the puck from the point and Boyd Kane providing the deflection in on the screen in front. That would snap a streak of 37 consecutive penalties killed. Penguins came out and really peppered Holtby this period but the NHL locked out goaltender made every save look routine. Bears go up 2-0 while the Penguins were killing a 5-on-3 penalty. Zach Hamill would finally stuff one past Zatkoff. At this point with goals at a premium, a backbreaking goal.

At this point the Penguins had been shutout for 105+minutes going back to the 65 minutes of game they played scoreless in Binghamton and the 40 minutes played at Hershey plus whatever time that eclipsed in Bridgeport. All of these offseason acquisitions have not been scoring.

Third Period: Penguins finally score when Riley Holzapfel gets a nice pass from Bobby Farnham to make it 2-1. I had the sense at this point that the Bears started playing prevent and not looking for an offensive opportunity. Holtby weathers the storm and keeps the Penguins out of his net. Bobby Farnham takes a penalty late and ex-Penguin Jeff Taffe gets an empty netter with 1.1 seconds to play.

Three power play goals allowed after not allowing 37 in a row. Overall though, a good effort by the Penguins when playing even strength. You have to think that the offense will come around.

Three Stars: 3) Riley Holzapfel (goal +1) 2) Garrett Stafford (two assists, -1) 1) Zach Hamill (goal, -1)

How Holtby doesn’t get a star for his work baffled even Tom Grace postgame.

Around the Division: Syracuse drops Hamilton in Montreal, Quebec at the Bell Centre in front of 18,000+ fans by a score of 4-1. Norfolk and Binghamton had off tonight.

Standings: Syracuse 14 — Norfolk 12 — Hershey 11 — Binghamton 10 — Penguins 10

Wheeling Update: Keven Veilleux scores his first ECHL goal but it is not enough as the Toledo Walleye come in to WesBanco Arena and deal the Nailers a 5-2 loss. Patrick Killeen stopped 20 of 24 in net.

Penguins at it tomorrow again at home vs. the Portland Pirates at 7:05. Gameday will be here tomorrow at 3 p.m. for that one.

Let’s Go Pens!

Any doubt as to who the number one goaltender is between the pipes for the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins has been answered soundly. Jeff Zatkoff pitches a 32 save shutout, his second in three games and was by far outstanding tonight as the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins outlast the Binghamton Senators by a score of 1-0 in a shootout.

Zatkoff was opposed by Robin Lehner, who by all accounts was outstanding in his own accord. These are the I-81 wars that I yearn for.

Tom Kuhnhackl potted the game winner in the shootout in Round 8. Bobby Farnham made his WBS debut and by all accounts was a good as advertised as a guy who does not by any circumstance want to be demoted back to Wheeling. More on him later.

Jayson Megna was scratched along with Joe Morrow. The Farnham signing now makes enough sense with Dom Uher also not in the lineup this evening.

First Period: First opening sequence the B-Sens put three shots on goal. Then, with the help of some power plays the Penguins ran their total to eight. Shots for the period would end up 11-8 Penguins with both teams really getting decent looks.

Second Period: Penguins had almost a full two minutes of five on three to work with with a 4:00 high stick penalty to B-Sens Mark Borowiecki but were unable to get anything going offensively despite the power play, to me, looking better than it had in the past. Outside of that, Lehner and Zatkoff continued to steal the show.

Third Period: Highlight of this period was Bobby Farnham. The book on this kid is that he never stops skating and hits anything in sight. “Fan favorite” has been tossed around by those who have seen Farnham play both in Wheeling and collegiately. He lived up to it tonight. He runs into B-Sens goalie Robin Lehner, gets jumped by Andre Petersson and Shane Prince then leaves the ice bloodied. Just a stream of blood from his forehead all the way down his face. In skating off, he is screaming at the Binghamton bench using words that would get me fined if I used them here. Out of it, at a surprise to me, he was only assessed four minutes in penalties and allowed to continue in the game.

Now if the Penguins weren’t running into a brick wall such as Lehner tonight, it would have jump started them offensively and Farnham is a hero and the game ends in regulation. Not tonight.

Overtime: Uneventful, but for a late WBS power play with under a minute to go that they could not get anything going on so it was off to the…

Shootout: Paul Thompson scores in Round 1, Mika Zibanejad for the B-Sens in Round 2, Trevor Smith for the Pens in Round 3, Andre Petersson for the B-Sens in Round 4, then finally Kuhnhackl for the Pens in Round 8.

If the AHL had an award for “game of the week” this one would run away in a landslide.

Three Stars: 3) Tom Kuhnhackl (shootout game winning goal, even) 2) Robin Lehner (34 save shutout) and 1) Jeff Zatkoff (32 save shutout)

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Two years removed from being awarded AHL Goaltender of the Year, Brad Thiessen has been relegated to backup. Depending on the work load Zatkoff sees Friday vs. Hershey, you could make a case to ride Zatkoff all three games.

Around the Division: Bridgeport beat Norfolk in a day game 4-2. Syracuse blanks Hamilton 3-0. Hershey was off.

Standings: Syracuse 14 — Norfolk 12 — Penguins 10 — Senators 10 — Hershey 9

Wheeling Update: Nailers cough up a 3-0 lead in the third period and lose 4-3 in overtime to the Reading Royals at WesBanco Arena tonight. Carl Sneep was a +2, Patrick Killeen stopped 26 of 30 and Keven Veilleux was scoreless in his first meaningful game in over a year and a half.

Pens host Hershey on Friday at home in Wilkes-Barre at 7:05. If I get content tomorrow, I’ll have it. Always check me out on Twitter and Facebook for the latest nonsense.

Let’s Go Pens!